2011 Nor Cal Hiking Adventure

Fred Allebach

Written 12/27/12

2011 Northern California Hiking Adventure

Part One: Cape Mendocino/ Lost Coast

Part Two: Pacific Crest Trail (PCT): A: Hat Creek to Klamath River, B: Hat Creek to Route 36, C: Tuolumne Meadows to Route 36

Prelude

We continue to have an appetite for long distance hiking and some great areas remain for us to try out for the first time. In 2011, northern California was conspicuously available and we wanted it. As we eyed this hike we had to account for a Sierra Nevada snowpack at 180% of normal. Memories were fresh from our 2008 hike through Oregon and Washington, where we were many times lost in large snowfields, faced with risky river crossings and highly exposed steep snow banks. We weren’t anxious to repeat this type of risk and exposure.

Enter Kim D. Bartlett, master logistics coordinator and trip planner. Kim’s plan was to start in the driest section, Hat Creek and go north to the Klamath River to complete one half the hike. This route would bring us into the least snow and allow areas with the most snow the most time to melt. We parked Kim’s van at Old Station near Hat Creek. After hiking up to the Klamath we took a bus and hitch-hiked back to the van. Then I hiked south down through Lassen National Park to Route 36 and Kim picked me up a few days later in her van. We then returned to Sonoma, took a few days to restage and started the other half of the summer’s hike from Tuolumne Meadows, heading north to finish at Route 36.

We still had to confront large snowfields in both sections of this hike and we caught a good snowstorm south of Mt. Lassen on the last two days before finishing. In 2008 we had to account for huge regional forest fires. On this hike in 2011 it was snow. In 2012 it was lack of snow and overall dry conditions. 

7/15 THE BUCKEYE CAMP After a very pleasant drive up the North Coast we arrived at the Mattole River around 5:00 PM yesterday and began living out of our backpacks, no electronic gadgets except watch, camera and headlamp. The low tide was a -1.0 and we hit it about two hours late. That was OK as we planned to just take the hike as it came and if the whole day was three miles to the Punta Gorda lighthouse, so be it. We like to be walking into the low tide here because that ensures that the ocean is as far away as possible when we round certain exposed points. After a few miles and upon arriving at the Cooskie Trail Junction we decided to forego hiking on the beach and go eight miles up into the King Range Mountains and then back down to this camp where the trail crosses Cooskie Creek, a few miles above the beach and beneath a wonderful old buckeye tree.

The mountains and ocean were just spectacular! A super California kind of day! The sky was clear and all around us rolling hills, mountains and sweeping views of the ocean; no one around except us. We were on a pink cloud; everything was great. I told Kim I would take pictures only of her and put them all on the Internet, 1000’s of pictures of Kim. We were feeling pretty good, until we had to give up a lot of elevation and walk down majorly steep grades for miles and miles and the packs started to weigh on us and then when we had just about had it, we got to the shelter of this buckeye which I had found on a previous trip, on a day hike up from the beach. It’s been a pretty good first day on the trail.

Kim broke out a clipboard! No wonder her pack was so heavy.

There was a rattlesnake under the far end of our sitting log; we didn’t bother it. Some other hazards out here: bulls, bears, mountain lions, ticks, earthquakes, tsunami, poison oak, landslides, sleeper waves, exposed rocky points, but in spite of all that it sure is awful nice; a beautiful, dramatic place where nature rules.  We saw one river otter on the beach today and there were tracks of a bunch of them. Kim is reading Rose by Martin Cruz Smith and I am re-reading Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset. Kim won the first game of Yahtzee last night.

8/17 SPANISH FLAT  Spanish Flat is a long, grassy bench of about two miles right above the ocean, with piles of giant driftwood probably dating from the early logging days in the late 1800’s. A few weeks ago there was a 4 to 500 acre fire here, maybe more. The hills and mountains go straight up from this grassy bench. The hills have thick glades of pine and spruce interspersed with brush and open grassland. Spanish Creek opens into a wide alluvial fan as the foothills open to the bench and beach.  Up into the hills the canyon quickly narrows down where we are camped on a small bench above the creek just out of the burn area.

The burn area includes all of Spanish Flat north of the creek, including the driftwood piles and the elaborate driftwood huts constructed over the years. All is now charcoal. Wow. The fire made its way up all the grassy slopes until it hit a ridgeline or the firefighters stopped it with a fire line. From the vantage of a previous year’s campsite area, Spanish Flat looks like a moonscape, a rather different ambience. Amazingly the firefighters stopped the fire from entering any forested areas and you can see they went to great lengths to protect the trees and glades. They dug super steep lines around the glens; they cut off lower tree branches to keep fire from jumping up into the trees and into the precious forests. The fire still got right to the forest edge and singed the trees. It must have been quite a battle. Now we see the aftermath and try to reconstruct what happened.

           

The wind can be ferocious here in the afternoon and probably some hikers had a fire near the beach right by Spanish Creek, once it caught in the tall dry grass and got into the driftwood, it was gone. It could have been smokers too, tobacco or pot. Kim and I imagined what it would feel like to be responsible for all this destruction and it wouldn’t feel good. There are few lightning and thunder storms here so you can’t say “oh, its just natural anyway.” But owing to how the firefighters saved all the trees and glens, the grass and bushes will come back quickly enough and it will look much better than in the hills to the south of Spanish Creek where a past fire did get into the trees where it now remains a ghost forest; that area is scarred for lifetimes.

           

The firefighters must have responded almost immediately and they did a fantastic job. I’m all for Jerry Brown’s property assessment to support Cal Fire. Fee, tax, who cares? I’m for it. You need resources to handle pubic issues. Municipal entities and states have legitimate needs that logically demand revenue to fund. Cutting spending and trickle down from the rich is really not a plan for governing. And besides, corporations and the wealthy have more than ever now, why do they need a further incentive to create jobs with more tax cuts?  It doesn’t make sense. For example: if your income doesn’t change and your rent, food and gas take all the $, how will cutting expenses help you? It’s just a stupid idea to try and run the same show with less and less when stuff always costs more and more. OK, I’m supposed to be leaving this political stuff back in civilization. The moral of my Spanish Flat Story, don’t play with matches, only you can prevent forest fires and if not you, hopefully there will be funding and great firefighters like those who came out here and saved the glades and forests.

7/18 COOSKIE CREEK We took a relaxed easy pace north out of Spanish Flat and skirted past the Wall of Doom easily before high tide. We decided to stay at Cooskie Creek, as any closer to the trailhead at Mattole could precipitate a stampede for burgers. We got our favorite campsite up the creek in a perfect wind shelter and since the day was young, I decided to bushwhack up stream to the stone staircase which I had notice was in need of repair when we crossed the creek a few days ago up by the Buckeye Camp. After a 45-minute bushwhack I got to the staircase and spent an hour or so rebuilding the lower section where the large stones were starting to be dislodged by the creek. I cut back brush with my Swiss Army knife and defined the entry.  A mudslide on the other side of the creek had completely obliterated the trail and now the staircase sits as a jewel ready for intrepid route-finding hikers to discover. I thought about Jim Corbett and how for all he did otherwise in the Sanctuary Movement, his greatest work in his own eyes was to reopen a mountain spring in the Galiuro Mountains. Fixing that rock staircase was a Jim Corbett moment.

           

Now, brown cow, were going to hike 7 miles out of here, drive Kim’s Previa van across the Coast Range on Route 36, cross the Central Valley and then stage ourselves in the Mt. Shasta/ Mt. Lassen area to drop off resupply boxes at Castella and Burney Falls State Park. We’ll also maybe find a back road to the Hat Creek Rim and drop off a few gallons of water near the PCT, to pick up later while on our 30-mile dry stretch. Then we head to Old Station to pick up a borrowed GPS, park the van and actually start the PCT! By dropping off the resupply boxes in person we save @$35 in postage plus put a face on our packages. By dropping off water we insure against any dehydrated death marches.

7/20 CATTLE CAMP CAMPGROUND RT. 89 east of Mt. Shasta  Like Jack London’s Call of The Wild, we left the sheltered life and climate of the safe and forgiving Bay Area and are about to embark on an adventure into the unknown where for perverse reasons known only to adventurers, being uncomfortable is something actually sought after. We’re into Ponderosa pine country now, a good chilly morning. One of my first discomforts on the trail will be having to wear all my clothes to stay warm at night and thus have no pillow material, what a horrid fate! I carry as little clothes as possible to keep my pack weight down and my sleeping bag is very light, not much fill, so I need all my resources at night to stay warm. In the day I move and eat to stay warm. Even so, my clothing is enough to fill a good portion of my pack. My last line of defense is a wool hat, wind proof gloves and thick wool sox.

           

We met a local yokel here last evening and he proceeded to carry on about how people from the city were all rude and out of touch. City folk are always in a hurry.  Their rules and regulations were ruining his fishing, country lifestyle.  City people land managers have stopped stocking trout in alpine lakes to save some silly frog.  Nature is being made over into how pointy-headed liberals want it. He was also a church going man. I pretty well kept my mouth shut and Kim came through with that there are good and bad people wherever you go – she always resists the blanket generalizations. It’s definitely a different cultural world here in rural California.

The old negative comparison always gets things off on the wrong foot.  That’s a conversation style, a habit, an automatic pilot, an entrapment by ideology, if you’re for something it always seems to entail being against something else. Sometimes all that comes through is the negativity.  Reasonable people can agree on reasonable things, the points just need to be made in a palatable way. You start by being willing to walk in the other’s shoes. Taking a hard position provokes other hard positions, and then reason is lost, the fight is on.  At this point people just run scripts, they default to an ideological line. Actual thoughtfulness is left far behind.

The rural/urban gulf is a big one to cross. There has to be the will to try and bridge the gap. This difference is not a new thing. The urban/rural split is as old as cities themselves. Look at the Bible, the pastoral rural Hebrews saw the early civilization cities as places of evil and corruption, Sodom and Gomorrah. Ironically, at first the rural guys were pastoralists only and the city guys were the sedentary agriculturalists. Now agriculture and pastoralism have both been collapsed into being “rural” while the cities are seen as something else, exclusively urban.

What it all amounts to is a hierarchical system where rural natural resources are procured and funneled to places of urban manufacture and distribution. Wood, minerals and ores, cattle, livestock, all come from rural areas and these are then transported to and refined in urban areas for further distribution back to everyone as finished products. This is how it works. You need a broad base of resource producing areas with low population. This is the bottom of the hierarchy. That’s how this cookie crumbles; those with all the power live in urban areas as that is where everything is concentrated.

When people move to the city there is less social control, more education, more exposure to different ideas and life becomes less rigid, less traditional. That’s how it goes. You are not going to take educated city people and turn them back into Bible thumping literalists; too late, Pandora’s Box cannot be closed once opened and the opening itself occurred back at the beginning of civilization, that’s the real culprit here, not cities and urban people but civilization itself is the boogie man for challenging “tradition”. 

Today there’s a culture war between rural “tradition”, agriculture and pastoralism versus a more modern urban lifestyle. Yet both rural and urban are part of the same ball of wax historically. Before any rural or urban divides, the human race was all hunter-gatherers anyway. It was the dawn of civilization that brought agriculture, domestication and metallurgy; and after that very few stayed “traditional” as hunter-gatherers. What is traditional or not is really a specious question. Today’s rural people are just as civilized as today’s urban people. Both are different elements of the same system and should not be at war with each other. It doesn’t make sense. With no cities, no universities, no technological hubs, the rural guys would go back to the Middle Ages. Is that the tradition they want?

We stopped by the Harrison Gulch Ranger Station along Rt. 36, in the Yolla Bolly – Middle Eel Wilderness yesterday to see my friend Ken Graves, the Forest Service packer and trails man. Ken is in the Back Country Horsemen as well, a really fine group of people with great traditions to share. My SCA trail crew packers Ken, Bill Roberts, and Jim Upchurch are primo rural guys, entirely different than the local yokel mentioned above. Ken, Bill and Jim are not bitter, they don’t feel the need to put anybody down. They are perfect rural spokesmen; they show by their actions the fruits of rural life.

7/20 Hat Creek Campground We were going to start the PCT today, but at 2:00 PM our mail delivery with the GPS unit had not come so we decided to hole up one more day in hopes it will arrive tomorrow. We’re borrowing Kim’s son Davis’ GPS, (global positioning system) as we got lost enough in snow in 2011 that we though it might be useful. (1)

The fun adventure for today was driving 20 miles out across the lava strewn Modoc Plateau to find the PCT intersection with Forest Road 22 and stashing 3 gallons of water out in some sticky chaparral.  This water stash will be about 20 miles from our last water, i.e. we need to make 20 dry miles to get to these three gallons. That will give us 3 gallons to do the last 10 miles. It was a little tricky finding the trail but we got it figured – hopefully the water will be there when we arrive… The word is that this 30-mile dry stretch has: ticks, poison oak, 5 million grass seeds and scratchy brush.  The scratchy brush doesn’t sound bad as I ‘ve got a massive case of Poison oak from the Lost Coast.

           

The campground here serves primarily the fishing/RV set. Fly-fishing, campfires, folding chairs, beers; life could be worse. Soon enough however we’re going to get what we came for, a minimalist experience that will challenge our fundamental human capacities: spirit, reason and endurance. Soon we’ll leave behind all political, civilized stuff and be free to settle into a more basic existence: eating, sleeping, walking, talking. Our ingenuity will be put to the test with every snowfield and unmarked junction, every quest to find water hidden up some draw. We have an overt goal and structure of the trip, a specific time allotted and inside that there is the real goal: letting go and allowing the process. These trips are kind of like a meditation retreat. All the gravy happens just by virtue of simplifying and being mostly around trees, wind and mountain streams.

7/24 Burney Falls State Park hiker’s camp We had a very nice 4 day, 3 night 50 mile walk along the Hat Creek Rim, a very dry, sparse area similar to the Sonoran Desert with a fun mix of plants from Ponderosa pine and sugar pine to Manzanita, sage, white oak and all manner of scrubby, thorny brush. Hat Creek itself runs north out of Mt. Lassen from snowmelt down along a lava plateau with numerous volcanic features including lave tubes and old lava flows.  You can see where the lava ran and then stopped. The long narrowish valley seems to connect Lassen and Shasta in an intimate vignette, a private view, off the beaten track. Not too many hikers do 4 days on Hat Creek Rim but Team Slow Poke managed to pull it off. Most hikers burn through here ASAP, one day even. We had some very nice camping spots, one under huge ponderosa with a Shasta view, another in a grassy field with white oak groves. The temps were hot; it was dry and dusty yet we stayed well hydrated and enjoyed the desolate, barren feel which reminded us alternately of Arizona, Mexico and other volcanic places we’ve visited. Now we’re re-supplied, showered, cleaned up and ready for the next stretch, eight days and 80 some miles. We’ve met some really nice hikers, Waldo from Ohio, “Tall Tree” from Modesto, “The French Team” and Ramsova, an actual trail hobo with whom we passed most of this afternoon chatting and telling jokes at a picnic table by the store. Now a tired weariness sets in and the tent with its protection from mosquitos calls me; it’s 7:30 PM, sun going down through the pines, time to retire.

7/25 Peavine Creek Today was a long ten hours, 14.5 miles, lots of uphill, many shade breaks, our packs are heavy after resupplying at Burney Falls. Peavine Creek here has a nasty deer hunter camp and a network of dirt roads which we immediately disliked, kind of Mad Max level stuff and really nowhere else to camp but a dusty, semi-hidden spot on an old logging road above the creek where we had egg noodles alfredo over instant mashed potatoes with some stuffing thrown in; excellent! Surely not enough but after a half hour I feel full and now it’s time for Yahtzee and reading. Hiker appetite is beginning to show.

7/26 Peavine Creek I’m noticing a new part of my body, my ribs! They’re sticking out! It’s cold; got all the clothes on this morning, no bugs, we’re close to approaching our first snowfields.

A few observations about trail life; one, the silence and immersion in nature really quiets the mind, two, you don’t get away from culture you enter a new one. A simple lifestyle and immersion in nature combine and create a certain inner stillness that grows over time. For the culture part you have a bunch of people doing the same thing. How they go about it results in observable differences. These differences are noticed, cultural qualities such as elites, pedestrians, professionals, amateurs, old style, new style etc. are all distinguished.

Cultures are like automobiles, they all get you from point A to point B, they all have the same exact function. Yet the stylistic differences are sometimes difficult for the actor’s to transcend.  Low riders and hot rods become separated and unable to appreciate each other. The same holds for Amish with one reflector or two on their buggies or Mennonites who have buttoned clothes or hooks and eyes; Protestant, Catholic, Muslim, all have minute differences which can obliterate basic commonalities and then separate people off into cultural eddies where they stay, content to eat their own propaganda and never a desire to step back and see outside the box. New cultural differences among hikers show up and they have to be dealt with; it seems all differences have to be reconciled in one way or another.

At the same time here on the trail, the mind is quieted and a certain degree of inner peace emerges. The bulk of your time on the trail is spent alone or with your partner(s). This is where the stillness of mind comes from. When you do meet up with others it tends to be a salient, memorable event. During encounters with other hikers is when the cultural differences show. Since “every man’s way is right in his own eyes”, (Proverbs 21:2) sometimes a chance meeting with other hikers forces you to deal with conflicting assumptions about the whole endeavor of why you are even out there. Conflicting interactions are infrequent yet they stand out the most. Some stylistic conflicts are quite predictable; you can see it coming just by how people look and what gear they have.

Peavine creek 7/26 cont’d     Out of the stillness of foot steps and forest emerge certain insights: from High Mountain, a thru-hiker we met on the AT: the Four Moods of God, 1. friendliness 2. sympathy 3. happiness for others happiness 4. equanimity. High Mountain also said “the last desire to go is hunger.” From Zoner, a PCT thru-hiker we met at Subway Cave a few years ago, The Order of Life: awareness, moderation, patience, respect, longevity. And a few days ago from Ramzova, who’s father called him a bum: a hobo is someone who travels and works, a tramp is someone who travels and doesn’t work, and a bum doesn’t travel or work, so he said “Dad, I’m a tramp, not a bum.” Ramzova lives on a fixed income Navy retirement and has mastered living on $10.00 a day. And finally Tall Tree, a young man reminiscent of Alexander Supertramp who shared with us the other day his joy of being able to live with only what he carries on his back.

           

When we get past the outward cultural differences there are certainly gems to share. Those gems are there all the time and our eyes just don’t see; we don’t listen; we’re fooled by exteriors.

7/26 Camp at mile 1447 (Shasta view) Wow, we just had a geologist stop by our camp and ended up talking about how we are all star dust, how life as represented in fossils, is only seen since 500 million years ago, how the Klamath Mountains are pasted onto the North American continent, along with a brief history of the Great Central Valley, Coast Range, Sierra Nevada, Cascades etc. This was quite enjoyable, the kind of chance interaction that makes the trail really fun. Plus with their maps, he and Kim were able to figure out exactly where we are, not an easy task with these small scale topographic maps crisscrossed with un-named Forest Service roads to nowhere.

We have a smashing view of Mt. Shasta, quite close now and we are about to cut right in front of it along a ridge over to Castella but in the meantime we’ll enjoy this dry camp with 1 ¾  gallons of water to last us from dinner through when we leave tomorrow morning. You’ve got to have water; it is really critical but our overall daily use is small, less than five gallons for the both of us, for drinking and cooking.

7/28 Deer Creek We got into our first snow yesterday after getting through Bartle Pass, a tough proposition as the Bartles put up a lot of resistance, but we made it through and handled the snow easy enough. For one long, steep snow drift across the trail, we went down and under it, any slip would result in a rapid, sliding crash into stumps, logs and rocks at the bottom, better to fight the brush and go around it. After coming around the north side of Mushroom Rock and exiting the local snow we promptly took a wrong turn and ended up turned around for 3 ½ hours in a maze of old logging roads where we found giant bear shit and some bear tracks along the way. Ultimately we collected ourselves, backtracked, found our wrong turn and camped last night on a ridge with a towering view of Mt. Burney, the Burney wind generators, Mt. Lassen and over to the Central Valley, the Yolla Bollys, Trinity Alps and Grizzly Peak. The stars were stupendous. We handled being turned around (lost) pretty well and nobody came uncorked. Today we spent a good chunk of the morning chatting with a young man with the trail name of Hercules and we all enjoyed each other’s company. We’ve been making between 10 and 14 miles a day. I have especially enjoyed the new and different views of Northern California and getting some dramatic close-ups of Mt. Shasta. Now we have eaten, cleaned up, brushed teeth and are both in the tent taking refuge from flies and mosquitos. The sound of the creek below suffuses the forest of massive Douglas fir with a calm hiss and gurgle; the sun gradually disappears, the shadows grow long and darkness claims its night.

7/29 Ah-Di-Na campground on the McCloud River Tonight brought a whole new flavor of California: white oaks, laurel, poison oak mixed with Ponderosa, Incense Cedar, Douglas Fir, steep-sided fully forested mountains with tons of water running, especially along the McCloud River where camp Ah-Di-Na was a private resort for San Francisco wealthy families of Whittier and Fitzburgh. This place was later bought by William Randolph Hearst and the ruins of the camp are nicely displayed by the Forest Service. The over-all oaky feel combined with evergreens is a new twist for me on California life zones. The river is very refreshing, just as well as the temperatures are hot, calling for multiple river soaks to keep calm and collected. We got here around 1:00 or 2:00 PM and just kind of parked it. Ah-Di-Na is a semi-developed campground with water, toilets and bear-proof trash containers; $10.00 fee, well worth it to clean some clothes, chill out and tend to our feet, which after our first nearly 100 miles are having issues. Some campground neighbors invited us for a Dutch oven chicken dinner. Life could be worse. The Dutch oven was full of vegetables too, mmmmmm! very good.

7/30 Ah-Di-Na The night has just faded to dawn, the Pleiades constellation is gone, evaporated into the sky. Today promises to be good and hot as we descend towards the upper Central Valley.  An early start promises many hours of comfortable hiking. Our dinner hosts last night got totally ripped on Crown Royal whiskey and that was entertaining in and of itself. We’ll have eight miles with no water to start but us pros can handle it.

The sound of the river overwhelms all.  If there were lions and bears we would be none the wiser. As they say ignorance is bliss. The river takes you off to a deep sleep, to a land of 10,000 children’s fantasy books; last night passed in the blink of an eye, now, back from our night flight we drink our coffees as the daylight comes, soon to be ready to pack and go.

           

At the beginning of an eight to ten day run our food and fuel is heavy; gradually the load lightens until like now with two days to go my food weight is minimal and the pack quite comfortable. The thru-hikers all have very small packs with minimal gear, one fellow, Hercules, wanted to try my old Kelty frame pack and he was delighted with all the differences, commenting, “wow, I feel like I’m in a jet-pack.” The end of a section is always lighter for pack weight. Our next section is 100+ miles so we will start heavy, about as heavy as we ever want to get.

           

After doing enough long distance hikes, we’re settling in to being comfortable with our hike, not needing to compare ourselves to others so much. Comparisons do happen, they can’t be eliminated and they seem to be part and parcel of baseline human thought. The phrase “hike your own hike” is easy to say yet the temptation to compare is great.  It has become clearer to us that our goals and style are fine in and of themselves; we’ve got it down for what we’re doing: 10-15 miles a day and stopping to smell the flowers. We’ll take a heavier pack weight to be able to go at a slower pace.

7/31 confluence of Squaw Valley Creek and Cabin Creek 5:30 AM  The rush of water blurs everything except our little creek side bubble.  The soporific noise makes for great sleeping. The creek’s banks are lined with large, dinosaur-like plants and big lazy pools of deep mystery dot the run down to the bridge and beyond. I went in multiple times yesterday afternoon in spite of the very cold water temps, the afternoon heat around these parts is substantial. The walk down into this area led again through old growth groves of Douglas fir and Ponderosa Pine. Their very presence caused us to stop and wonder at the truly amazing height and bulk, the gnarly bark, the tree-size branches and stately towering presence. Kim counted one cut section of Douglas fir at over 250 years. This tree was already 100 at the time California became a US state. The rock outcroppings also cause us to wander further back in time to contemplate the structure of these mountain ranges, rivers and geographical features, for us to develop a deeper appreciation of what we’re experiencing on this very cool Nor Cal hike.

The poison oak is super thick and nearly impossible to avoid; it demands respect and constant focused attention. It’s a scourge. Other things you can surrender to, but not poison oak. Kim has multiple blisters and foot issues, making it so she has to reach new levels of pain tolerance. Today will be 15 miles and we’re getting going early, anticipating how our second resupply will go logistically, where to position ourselves, times, needs, etc.  We try to plan and avoid resupply meltdowns but often enough we come uncorked by coming into town, especially if it’s a nasty gas station type of place.

           

6:00 PM, 2 miles east in woods above I-5, four miles from Castella      The train whistles and grinds up the grade past Mt. Shasta, semi truck engines moan by, the background roar of traffic is similar to how the ocean sounds from 2 miles away. The train fades, the horn barely registers. We will go in, navigate civilization, taste it’s bounty in the form of showers, treats, phone calls, postal service and then re-position to climb the big grade on the other side of I-5. It will be 37 miles uphill. Flat spots will be at a premium. Flat spots on water are prime property in this line of work. The terrain is so steep and hilly that you have to take what you can get for camping. You also pay close attention to how far it is to the next water to make sure you have enough. The mere thought of not having enough water makes me thirsty. We make a call if a spring or creek is clean and then we don’t purify it.

           

The Pacific Starlight Amtrak train must have been one of those whistles blowing last night, echoing up our canyon, reminding us of our last PCT trip up north in Oregon and Washington. We took that train to Klamath Falls and then over to the PCT. We hear that lonesome whistle blowing but we’re not real hobos out in the bushes, riding the rails; but we are living with barely anything.

The experience of drastic simplicity opens doors for us that are surprisingly liberating. For one thing, when all you have is on your back there’s less to manage and worry about, it makes you nimble, mobile and unencumbered. You are free to focus on other things, and what is left to focus on? Pretty much it boils down to your body, your thoughts and nature. The stage is simple and not socially based. Your mind tacks off in new directions the novelty of which inspires and excites. With a trip like this what you’re buying is a throwback to simpler times, a chance to open up simple pleasures, to see how rewarding life can be in the absence of so many material possessions. Your focus is thrust inward and the life of the mind eclipses a life of stuff.

8/1 Ammiratis’ Market, Castella CA 11:00 AM   The interesting geographical fact that this area contains the headwaters of the Sacramento River is obscured by a lengthy hang-out period at a roadside gas station. Tourists and motorists drive in one after the other: cokes, chips, ice, booze, gum, whatever, they got to have it. Soon enough we’ll be out of here and staged for tomorrow’s early departure which I am kind of dreading as I’ll have a full 10 day resupply of food, full water etc. It will be a good workout but we’ll gain high county, cooler temps and bigger views We are set to go through four wilderness areas, Castle Crags, Russian, Marble and Trinity Alps.

8/2  7:00 PM, ridge camp with view of Lassen and Shasta, Castle Crags, Hat Creek Rim, Burney Peak, the upper drainages of Squaw Valley Creek and the McCloud River. Here we have a view of our whole hike so far, about a 140 mile view. It’s fun to recap all our walking in one big view. Shasta looms. We are now higher up in elevation than Castle Crags, the Sacramento River is below and leading to the Central Valley, the Burney wind turbines lead on to Burney Pk., Hat Creek Rim is beyond that and that leads down to Old Station and Lassen. After making our ascent today we stopped on a nice shady flat spot under a big tree and promptly made our dinner. Then we played Yahtzee and chatted with two groups of hikers who came by. The full loads were tough to pull but here we are with a towering view of Shasta and Northeastern California. Our tent is in a rocky, granite meadow and we will sleep as we have been with the net only, no tarp, under the stars, situated in a special, commanding spot. There’s no water here but we packed in a few gallons and that should get us through breakfast and five or six miles down the trail. We’re now crossing into a different geological province. The Klamath Mountains, the Trinities and the Marbles are made up of oceanic crust that rather than being subducted, over-rode the North American plate. The rocks are great, reminiscent of Catalina gneiss or Sierra granite. There are big serpentine outcroppings. Serpentine is the California State rock.

8/3 same camp as above Marvelous dawn and sunrise!

8/4 Porcupine Lake We arrived mid afternoon and were ready to stop and take all of tomorrow off, what they call taking a zero. I found the perfect camp spot with nice features all around plus beach front property. It soon became apparent however that the mosquitoes would not allow us to enjoy this little paradise. No zero then, but still a pleasant afternoon at another spot above the lake with less bugs. The swimming was perfect, dinner great.  Now I wait to take off my warm clothes and begin walking. Conserving body heat and generally managing your temperature is a must.  This is a skill you must have. Our lake here is inside a small cirque where the foot of a glacier once sat. The sun now rises on the rocks and moraines above. The headwaters of the Sacramento River are below us on one side and those of the Trinity River below on the other.

7250’  Deadfall Lake After five or so miles Kim found her zero here at Deadfall Lake. One thing of immediate interest was a species of tree we haven’t seen yet. What are those things!? The trees are 10-15’ high with crowns up to 20’ across. They are not evergreen. There are no acorns under them. Bark is gone from the windward side and clings to the lee side of trunk and branches in the same manner as bristlecone pines, junipers or Manzanita. Branches can be mostly dead, with one thin strip of bark leading to one live area at the end. These mystery trees flop over but continue to grow, almost creeping along the ground. One cross-section showed a wood so dense you couldn’t even see any rings. The wood is very dense and heavy. Habitat for this tree so far seems to be rocky substrate, lakeside, south/ western exposures. The leaves are small, oblong shaped and coming to a point. The trees remind me of super scrubby desert trees like the Bursera genus elephant tree, crossed with a bristlecone. Near as I can tell, they’re deciduous. Kim calls them Jesus trees as they remind her of Mediterranean scraggly olives.

           

At our current elevation the air is much clearer than in the valleys below. Valleys seem to be constantly filled with haze of unknown origins. Hence, the vistas at altitude are crisp and vivid, a nice feel of visual clarity. Today is quite cool, and big cumulus clouds threaten. We can see large thunderstorm development off in the distance. These big puffy clouds add much drama to the landscape. Thick patches of cloud shadow pass over making for an action way better than TV or the movies.

           

And, a young man from Weed, CA came by; I asked him about the trees and he said: Mountain Mahogany. They are in the rose family, Rosaceae. The curl-leaf mountain mahogany, the kind we saw, can live to 1000 to 1500 years, maybe more. Cercocarpus is a small genus of five or six species of deciduous shrubs and small trees native to the western US and northern Mexico. The genus inhabits semi-desert to chaparral, often at higher elevations as well. Different kinds are: Birch leaf, Hairy, Little leaf, Curl-leaf, Alder leaf and Catalina Island

8/9 Etna, CA Alderbrook Hiker Hostel   Now we have arrived at our first luxury of the trip and are safely ensconced in a hostel with all the comforts of home after having completed 240 miles on the trail. This section has been very scenic and we passed many of Northern California’s wilderness gems.  Of note:  the Russian Wilderness, it’s granite statuary similar to Mt. Lemmon outside Tucson, AZ or the Sierra Nevada. The PCT takes a big loop south and then west before coming back up to Etna. As we got to the road I said to Kim, someone will come just as I unstrap my camera from my pack and sure thing, this old guy appears and stops right in the middle of the Somes Bar Road, a paved two lane highway. We got in. He was probably about ninety. The road from Etna Summit down to Etna is about as curvy and steep as you can imagine. The guy had a dog that kept distracting him, going in his lap and under his legs. Kim and I were terrified, scared to death. This guy could barely see, the light was shining in his eyes. The windshield was dirty and hazed. I thought of Neal Cassady of Jack Kerouac’s On The Road and from the Merry Pranksters, the magic bus driver, veteran of LSD soaked rides, who said “you got to go over the outside edge” to make it around a tough corner…Kim prayed, I was hanging on, a bundle of nerves – we made it! Woah! What a ride!  And now I’ll recap some of the notes I took along the way here.

           

Water: Water is it. Water is our top priority. I never thought it could taste so good, a fresh, snow melt spring, unaltered, straight from nature’s mouth. Water is a big deal, to get it, know where it is, to plan for dry stretches. Springs are tops as the water needs no treatment; lake water can only be used after boiling or heavier treatment. Lake water is low on the desirable scale, full of fish shit and who knows what else. Running water is what you want. If a creek or spring has no people, cattle or horses above it then we drink free and clear, otherwise we use bleach, one drop per quart. Kim’s map reading skills get us to the water and she plans when we need to carry a full load or when we will pass a lot of streams and need to carry less. Our top water use per day for drinking and cooking is five gallons; we can do with less if need be.  Bathing in lakes and stream pools doesn’t count, that’s free. We use the bleach mainly for ease, cost, weight and simplicity, no super expensive pump filters that clog, need cleaning and expensive replacement, no expensive tablets or drops whose main ingredient is chlorine anyway. 

At times I wonder if the whole threat of giardia is just a lot of hype done by the water filter industry? Giardia fear seems more driven by consumer hype than any facts accessible by the public.

Hiking: One of the main prerequisites of a long distance hike is to not fall down and hurt yourself. You pass through many rough and varied substrates; if you can stay on your feet you live to hike another day. Not falling requires a knowledge of conditions on the ground and how to handle yourself. You’ve got to know when to put the red flag up and proceed with caution.

           

Tenting and campsites: we’ve had to get used to rocky, lumpy, unleveled spots. The bottom line is after a long, hot day you’re just glad to have shade and not be standing up. We typically eat dinner at mid-day by a creek with flat spots around. We stop, take off our shoes and relax, eat, clean up and take about a two hour break before going on to the last leg of the day. We may tank up at the last water source of the day and go on to dry camp on a ridge, point or saddle where we take in sweeping panoramic views, or some other novel aspect of the PCT, to find a different taste of Northern California. We avoid swampy areas as the bugs will rip us after dark or before. So far we’ve settled into 13-15 miles a day and had some very nice lake spots for swimming and some high, dry camps with long views of our surroundings. Afternoon thunderstorms have been building and as of late the tarp has been on the tent.  Otherwise we use just the mosquito net body of the tent, which gives a view of the stars. Orion is full up about 4:30 AM now, a harbinger of the winter sky.

           

The landscape: As we walk along, the character of the landscape changes. Noticeable changes are relative to different directional exposures, elevation, rock and soil type etc.  High elevation plant communities are sparse, harsh, dry and barren. The sun is intense.  Many plants such as Manzanita or mahogany have the same gnarled adaptation. Plants cling tenaciously to life, never giving up until the last strand of bark is severed. At elevation, trees turn to “krummholz”, German for twisted wood. Krummholzy trees are windswept, sand and ice blasted, crushed by snow and ice, stunted and reduced to low shrubs and mats.  I like to notice the texture of tree bark, the texture of minerals grading in rock.  All along there is always something to call your attention, to stop and ponder, wonder, observe and appreciate.

           

The PCT Handbook descriptions of the landscape:  In the handbook logging areas are frequently spoken of as almost purgatory-like places. The book’s authors make judgments we frequently disagree with as to the character and quality of the land. Logging areas admittedly don’t represent the wild beauty many hikers seek yet our country needs wood and we should get this wood from our own backyard and not some poor 3^rd world country. If we want it let’s use our own. To have a 3000 mile hiking corridor of wilderness only is probably not possible and thus we have to cross multiple use areas as well. So yes, it is ugly in logging areas but not necessary to speak of it so pejoratively when as a people, we need wood; it’s small-minded.

The essential character of the land does not evade us; we see logging, ranching, mining, roads and we appreciate wilderness values when we find ourselves somewhere in them. Trout stocked lakes, deer and elk herds without predators, these are an extension of domesticated land use anyway. A lot of the public land that appears wild at first glance is really managed for extractive and recreational uses: hunting, mining, ranching, timber, hiking. That hikers can come out here and be free of large predators and store their food on the ground by their sleeping bags speaks to that, what is really wild is long gone. You could even say that true wilderness ended with the beginning of civilization 10,000 years ago. If hikers want to bemoan logging and call for wilderness, go to Alaska. You couldn’t walk around here like you owned the whole place, food all mixed in your bags and sleep next the trail alone if there were grizzlies. The upshot: we need all of the above types of land, places for people to take raw materials, to hunt, fish, etc. and places where nature rules and that is the top value in and of itself. No need for the PCT book to have such sour grapes because every step is not paradise. Having said all this, ultimately I agree that for what hikers really seek, multiple use land doesn’t provide it. More on this later.

           

Hike your own hike: this is a popular phrase within the trail community yet people tend to be judgmental anyway and ignore this paean to tolerance.  Trail society ends up being segregated into various statuses, differentiations and developmental age sets, like you would expect from the highly social animal we are. Hike you own hike proposes an ideal of individual freedom yet unmitigated freedom soon runs up against blow back from collective responsibility. This I suppose is the libertarian dilemma; everyone can do their own thing as long as it causes no harm to others doing their own things; the rub comes when people inevitably define harm in different ways.

Mitigating circumstances on the freedom to hike your own hike would be: fouling water sources, hoarding/ abusing fire wood resources, careless disposal of feces, not protecting food and creating food habituated animals, careless use of fire, taking all the food out of free boxes, creating new campsites for convenience sake only, etc. etc. These things gravitate to suggesting a baseline human social contract similar to the 10 commandments; some things you just don’t do. Freedom doesn’t go that far. No human is an island divorced from all others.

Many things merely constitute differences in style and can be argued about but fall squarely within the realm of individual prerogative. The rub comes in where some may find harm and others find a legitimate use. Then there gets to be a power struggle, positional conflict, win/lose, black/white propositions and if individuals can’t work it out among themselves then some collective entity has to step in to provide laws and regulation. For example: too much freedom with campsite selection and use of fire results in one, unsightly erosion and signs of overuse, two, mandatory campsite locations/ fire prohibition and three, eventually, advance site registration and the need for ranger enforcement.

Another aspect to allowing people to hike their own hike is developmental differences among age sets. Different age sets see the world differently.  One generation draws from different source material than another. I don’t know who the young people are reading, who they follow, what music they have. There is somewhat of a disconnect and this developmental aspect to differences has to be accounted for when trying to bridge the gap of different hikes.

I run into cliquish teen types of behavior, too cool, rude, aloof, don’t deal well with adults, social skills undeveloped, lost in their own movie, these are not positive interactions and so it goes to show, you don’t escape culture out on the woods. While I may be trying to leave behind pressure to go, go ,go, commuters, suits,  success, superficiality, to not bring or find all that out here, big swaths of this are merely transposed onto the trail and then you have to deal with it face to face as you pass these people by. Allowing others to hike their own hike is really an exercise in Dalai Lama-type tolerance; you really need to adopt a big view to have it work. Many older folks like myself are disillusioned by new trends in PCT hiking.

PCT users have mostly stylistic differences versus differences that cause actual harm. Being able to idealize hiking one’s own hike implies we might be able to grant the same freedom to others – I can hold my judgment in check in hopes others will do the same and we all respect the collective ground from which springs the potential for freedom individually. It’s got to be a balance, a tension between individual volition and social control. E pluribus unum.

           

It seems in all human behavior there may be about a 15% cheating rate, a 15% defector rate. You see it in marriage, banking, retail, on and on. If there are too many cheaters above that rate things may tip to a cheater stampede where more and more people begin to say “why not me too?” Cutting switchbacks is a good case in point or leaving trash, not protecting food etc.

           

On the trail as in other human endeavors, freedom gets conflated with purity, with purported highest senses of use, status etc. and so you get your self-described elites and blue collars but in the end, all are going from point A to point B and the differences are not in kind but of degree.  

           

I can apply the basic principles of “hike your own hike” to economics. At least it’s a decent metaphor, that if some parties cause actual harm to the collective ground through monopolies and progressive inequalities, then they have a responsibility to give back to the whole from which their bounty derives. It is no longer freedom or hiking you own hike when you take away the possibility for others to do the same. This is morality 101. The point at which the common ground of nature becomes private property and this is than conflated as a right, this is where a legitimate door to harm opens, this is where the rub starts: who is causing who more harm?

The main trouble with morality, and religion, is that the beneficent principles are only applied to members of the inside group. Outsiders are reduced to heretics, infidels and apostates, outside the realm of any altruism that stems from morals as  applied to the in-group. In the mythology of the United States, the revolution and the constitution enshrined the bourgeoisie, the merchant class and put property rights as the highest above all. The merchants (“business”) gradually became the new aristocracy and all along the little guys were excluded as non-citizens with no rights. What about harm here? Is it not harm to exploit others? The point: you can’t just hike your own hike if you then take all the wood, burn up the forest, foul the water and generally besmirch the ground on which others may want to hike as well.

What must be done then is to enlarge the group of people who are seen as having rights to the level of the whole and not just the privileged; this then means regulating privilege in the same way campsites are regulated; if people can’t share and behave properly, they must then be forced to.

To be fair here, those who take the risks and put up their own hard-earned capital deserve more than those who risk nothing. Big fish demand some respect. I guess creating the perfect system would be hard to do, but perhaps a principle of over-all fairness and balance would be a good start.

And so now we are done resupplying in Etna having gotten our packages from the P.O. and survived the ride from hell down from the summit. We’re off to town to do a few errands, pass the evening and head back out tomorrow, Wednesday the 10^th of August.

8/11 Marble Valley Guard Station    The beginning of today’s hike into the Marble Wilderness started with about 15 cows in front of us on the trail. Every time we’d get close they’d run out ahead, staying on the trail. This went on for about two miles, with dung spewed everywhere before they finally went off into the bushes. And this is supposed to be wild? Seems to me that running cattle in wilderness is a breach of contract, wilderness is supposed to be untrammeled by man…. not thrashed by domestic animals. That was a bad note to start the day. Why were these cattle in a wilderness area? The grazing lease is grandfathered in from before the Marble Wilderness was created. The family can keep the lease as long as they like; once they don’t renew it, the land will be wilderness in perpetuity.

Kim had mentioned earlier about slum campsites, one of which we stayed at the night before our cattle rustling. Slum sites are thrashed by cattle, soil pulverized to dust, water polluted with livestock feces, trash and branches are ripped from trees etc. etc. Slummin’ it is more associated with multiple use land than wilderness yet cattle leased wilderness land is as slummy as anything.

Many popular hiking areas in Oregon, like Three Sisters are still under too much snow for much use and so people have come to areas where it’s mostly snow free, like here in the Marble Wilderness. Later on in the afternoon we began to run into tons of people as there was a trailhead nearby. We ended up here near the corral of a guard station, yet with a great view of Marble Mountain and a nice big green meadow full of wildflowers. There are at least ten big snags nearby so hopefully we make it through the night.

8/12 Jump Off Rock Camp   This morning we woke early and hiked up to Marble Mt. with no packs and enjoyed sweeping views of the Marble Wilderness. I have been getting up about 5:00 – 5:30 AM when it is still pretty much full dark, full stars. Today I slept in some but on arising there were still a few stars out, still qualifying as early. The hike was 1000’ up and 1000’ down, four miles, three hours, very nice. Then we hiked only a few miles with our packs to a spot where I had to take a zero. I did a Brigham Young, “this is the place.” We had started to see really cool rocks, mica schist, marble, small marble hoodoos and so when this camp spot appeared with its own spring, big views and access to a mountain full of cool rocks, we took it early in the day.  I got to explore and meticulously examine rocks, flowers, trees, vistas and Kim got to chill and write letters and read. Bears are all around and one went crashing off into the brush this morning yet they seem to stay in their own movie, and we stay in ours. This part of northern California has some of the highest density of back bears anywhere. Having the time to explore and situate myself here brought some of the magic I had hoped for, hours to while away just me and nature and the wind. Now the whispering pines rustle and the two of us are settled in on the side of a mountain with a big valley stretching below, the trees bow and bend, nothing but quiet, nature and us.

8/15 Hat Creek Campground, Lassen Area   We left our very nice Jump Off Rock camp and unbeknowst to us we were about to enter a good three days of serendipity. First of all, we almost always take our time but with 30 miles to Seiad Valley we needed to hurry to do two 15 miles days to be able to catch the only bus on Monday at 8:10 am.

That bus would take us to Yreka, then McCloud, then we’d be left to hitch back to Hat Creek, hike through Lassen Volcanic Park to Rt. 36, then back to Hat Creek, get Kim’s van, drive back to Sonoma and gear up for our flip flop, then have MaryAnn drive us to Martinez to the AMTRAK, then take the train to Yosemite and hike back to Rt. 36, catch the Indian bus to Red Bluff, get the AMTRAK bus to Sacramento, then the train to Martinez, MaryAnn pick us up and that would be 700 some miles of Northern California total. Kim did a great job planning the whole thing. It turned out after one night at a great little lake in Lassen, Kim went back to hat Creek for her van and I went through the rest of the Park alone and she met me at Rt. 36 a few days later.

So after leaving the Jump Off Rock camp we walked with a purpose and got to Paradise Lake for our first break of the day. We munched out good, adjusted our shoes and moved on only to quickly meet Joe and Becca around the corner, a couple who has a river rafting business on the Klamath and also does some horse packing for the Forest Service during fires. Joe had dreadlocks down to his waist and Becca had just recently cut hers; they had 2 horses and all their horse stuff was around camp. We ended up talking for probably 2 hours with eventually Kim and Becca off to one side and Joe and I off to another. We all hit it off pretty well and I found out from Joe that Northern California is over-run with Mexican drug cartels, that there has been a huge spike in theft and violence, that meth labs now travel in disguise as RVs and that there have been so many helicopter accidents in the region during fires that the Forest Service is now moving towards mostly packer support for fire crews. He also had a strain of Nor Cal herb called tutti frutti of which I was the recipient of a rather large gift, and I reciprocated with a full bag of our home harvested and home cracked Sonoma walnuts.

           

Joe and Becca also do yoga and rafting retreats.  They were really nice, sincere back-to-the-land types who by my estimation had about the perfect life. They do a little dry wall work on the side, work in Death Valley, go to Mexico etc. and so we found many points in common and the time just slipped away as we jabbered away.

           

We had to be moving as our miles were long, the time short and heads down we went until we saw a really cool tree under which we stopped for dinner. The nearby spring was slow and it took Kim about 45 minutes to get two gallons of silty water. Kim laid out her seating cloth next to the super wide base of the tree, with her back to the trunk and proceeded to be totally content in the aura of such a grand tree and I named her “Tree Girl.” I am here with all my clothes on and Tree Girl over there just a skirt and light windbreaker on! Dinner done we still had 7 miles to go.

It was late in the day and on and on we went until we saw a woman down the trail with a horse and another horseman behind her.  She greeted us, inviting our response, to show the horses we were just people and that all was OK. This is good packer/ hiker etiquette. I asked her where she preferred we stand aside, as horse/hiker interactions have a particular dance to do centered around getting the stock and packers by without spooking the animals and perhaps causing a wreck. She told us to come on down and stand to one side and as we got closer I saw a man and sure enough, it was Bill Roberts, a packer I worked with 17 years ago in the Yolla Bollys! Bill and I were extremely pleased to have this chance encounter and I got to meet Peggy and Bill to meet Kim. We reminisced and smiled and grinned and told old stories of dynamiting the big log, asked about mutual acquaintances, Ken Graves, Joe Green and the time slipped away, it was getting dark and Bill navigated his schedule with Peggy and we all agreed to meet for breakfast at the café in Seiad Valley in two days at 7:00 AM. Bill and Peggy were out with two horses and a mule, logging out deadfall off the trail. This on Saturday after working all day, and on a volunteer basis. Bill has been maintaining this section of the PCT for many years.

           

Kim and I then pulled in at twilight to a camp on a tributary of Greider Creek, set up, played Yahtzee, read and went to bed, having got 14 of our 15 miles done.

           

The next day, Sunday the 14^th we made the big descent 15 more miles down to the Klamath River. I left all that tutti frutti tucked under a bridge for some enterprising young adventurer to find. Kim swam in Greider Creek, super cold and we slogged it out to Seiad Valley to the RV Park, a combination junkyard, MadMax, StarWars bar type place. The owner, Bruce proceeded to give us about an hour rant on rural/urban issues, how do gooder liberals from the city were helping in ways that actually caused harm, specifically to him and his gold dredging outfit on the river and how the proposed national monument in the Klamath mountains/Siskiyou area was a totally no good liberal idiocy that would constitute a “taking” of local’s property rights and on and on. Yet he had a nice demeanor and was intelligent enough – since he did say he might refuse service to anyone who was for the monument I felt it best to keep my mouth shut over other issues although I did let it be known I was New Deal/Great Society liberal. All through the back roads of the area were home made, painted signs saying “No Monument” “lies” etc., similar to the “Take Back Vermont” signs of the past when that state approved civil unions for gay people. The monument is definitely a hot issue up there in the State of Jefferson and pretty much all the white people were against it, except Joe and Becca, who said “If John Muir had not gone to Alaska, this whole area would have been a National Park.”

           

The RV Park had a hiker hut with a microwave, TV, a half gallon of gin, a free box, some beat up old chairs, a laundry with super hot driers, some fairly dirty shower rooms and a camping area which was little different than a junk yard.

           

One side of the park was reserved for actual, high dollar RV guys with the big fancy diesel trucks and the rest was for transients like us who mostly seemed to be among the lower economic strata of society.  Thru-hikers can be rich but appear poor. They are all super dirty and down to earth from living outside for months at a time. So there we all are under this hut, some folks cooking giant pots of instant mashed potatoes on alcohol stoves, others watching a movie and drinking beer.  There were a couple of nice young German lads who were fun to chat with and then this Australian named Ian showed up on a bike with a trailer. Ian was short with a huge, midriff bulge front and back, skinny legs, a ponytail, bugged out eyes and a dirty green hat. He soon started boasting and telling tales of fantastic proportion until I knew he couldn’t be on the level.  On he went. Great drinking stories, eating the Amarillo 72oz steak stories and stuff like “yeah, this morning I drank a 12 pack on break, slept for a few hours and then got here, I’ll drink this 12 pack and save a few for breakfast.” He cooked a pound of high fat hamburger with a Lipton dinner thrown in and ate it all, pretty outlandish. He said he had been in the US military and was on retirement from Quantas Airlines where they used to “smoke a big fat joint after lunch and then get back to work.” Ian reminded me of another character I know from Tucson, Voodoo Richard. These guys are fun, but don’t trust them too far.

           

Somewhere along the line here we found out that Clint Eastwood’s ranch is over by Cassel on the Hat Creek Rim, it was Bing Crosby’s old ranch. I’d always wondered where Clint’s ranch was, now I know: Cassel, off Rt. 89 in between Burney and Old Station.

           

Somewhere in here Kim gained a new name: Luger Bartel, essentially a character that gets to realize all of Kim’s tomboy fantasies in the woods. For all of Kim’s friends: Luger Bartel is outrageous, outlandish and totally hilarious.

           

Then we arrive at the only store in Seiad Valley; the cashier was on lookout for us and as soon as we walked in the door she asked, “are you Kim and Fred?”, “ Why yes we are”,  “well here’s an envelope from Bill Roberts, he can’t make it to breakfast tomorrow but he left this $20.00 for you to eat with”. Bummer…. So there we are at 7:00 AM and I look in to see if the Café is open and there’s Bill hiding, trying to surprise us! He made it anyhow which was really fantastic and we had a great time for an hour hanging out and talking about all kinds of stuff. Bill had a favorite phrase going: “that’s just plum ducky”. “How are you doing?”, “Plum ducky”.  Bill is a cowboy poet and he told us one that encompassed the horse/mule packing history of California, plus a few recitations from the Man From Snowy Mountain and stories about cowboy gatherings in Elko, NV and Mule Days in Bishop on Memorial Day. You can see Bill on You Tube and maybe find his out of print book on cowboy poetry on Amazon. Look for Bill Roberts, cowboy poet. Bill is also an actual dynamite blasting man, Forest Service packer, volunteer PCT trail maintenance and well known in the region.

           

The café scene in Seiad Valley was great. Everybody knows everybody. The waitress chose what Bill had for breakfast. Kim did great by keeping Ian away from us, as well as keep other hikers at bay, she knew I had only this one hour, she protected our table from interlopers. We said our goodbyes and promised to be in touch and then we were on the bus to Yreka where we sat in the back amongst a group of Indians who were generally very friendly and talkative, except the one who was going to the parole office and to the MD to get his medications adjusted. He was like the Chief in One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest. The Indians were for the monument. One guy asked me what we hunted on the trail and I had to confess I was a city boy who never had the chance to learn that stuff. One Indian guy told me about “The General”, the largest Ponderosa Pine, in Tuolumne County.

           

The bus driver put on some late 1960’s San Francisco sound type music.  More and more characters kept getting on the bus as we rode alongside the scenic and totally rural Siskiyou county portion of the Klamath River. I told the Indians my woodpecker joke where the punch line is about “the best piece of ash I ever had” which got a hearty laugh from all.

           

Then Arthur Einstein got picked up at the WalMart parking lot with $190.00 worth of Ramen and cans of tuna. Kim started to engage him as she helped him load his stuff. He started to come out with some great material that I had to write down verbatim “immortality is as simple as apple pie, you just have to know the formulas”, “most people don’t know how to break through psychic warfare”, “psychic police are on the rise”, the communists, the mafia & US government are engaging in psychic warfare and that on December 21^st will be a huge catastrophe, there will be no governments left in the world, “you can find it all on WWtelepathic.net.” OK

           

After a few hours of Thrift Store perusing in Yreka we were on our final leg to McCloud on Rt.89. McCloud is an old company town for the timber industry and the housing styles showed it; we got a frosty soft-serve and started hitch hiking to Old Station and after about ½ hour who should stop by but our old campground host Don Moore from Cattle Camp. The truck stopped and backed up and who was there!? Don! We met him way back on 7/20. He was real happy to see us and brought us to Cattle Camp with the proviso that “we’ll figure out what to do next when we get there.” After a few hours of shooting the breeze with Don and his wife Claudia, Don offered to drive us to Old Station, an hour away and here we are now safely ensconced in our tent, Kim asleep, at Hat Creek Campground.

           

Tomorrow we’ll go up to the van, resupply from the food Kim set aside for the Lassen National Park section and be back on the trail.

8/16 Hat Creek   It is cold! Super cold high elevation Lassen air creeps down along Hat Creek at night and fills this depression with frigid, snowy ass air.

           

Being on the trail is in some ways like Anthropology 101. You can never escape yourself nor the matrixes of society that define us all. The trail is just a microcosm of life, of life’s journey, and it comes in all different flavors, so you have all different types, thru-hiker, section hiker, weekender, Anglo, Hispanic, different sets of values and ingredients define the flavor yet the journey is fundamentally the same. Sometimes class is apparent on the trail, but not much, you can maybe tell by the super big fancy watch… There are precious few black people on the trail; in general this activity seems limited to white people.

           

On one hand society’s influence is melting away (what debt limit?) into quiet meditation and on the other the vestiges of social strata and differentiation constantly walk by and are awakened with other hikers or on a stop in town.

           

We’ve had a little taste of Nor Cal and so far it is safe to say it is like many really nice rural areas: you have your 60’s and 70’s back-to-the-landers, your locals, your rich second home owners and your tourists and all the tensions therein you can imagine. Indians are in the mix as well, particularly near the Yurok or Hoopa Reservations.

           

This last winter had particularly heavy snow accumulations in the Sierra Nevada and those who wanted to thru-hike had to negotiate tremendous snow and massive icy run-off through swollen creeks and rivers. We’ve discovered that only the 20 some things, the younger age set, went through this big snow. The older age set can’t understand. Why risk your life for a lark? All of a sudden, I look in the mirror and I look old, gray, bags under my eyes, wrinkles; I have a more nuanced perspective. Life has swept me along and now I am different from the young. Developmental differences are big. I find generally not a whole lot of common ground with the young folks, they are busy with the prime of life, making their own mistakes and all the great wisdom of the old farts is pretty much irrelevant. Yet we’re all out here doing our own versions of point A to point B. There’s more in common than not probably.

           

I’ve got a picnic table and I’m on a roll here with my pen and a cup of coffee, never mind the frozen hands.

                       

We have noticed that being on the trail restores our faith in the goodness of humanity. Why? Kim feels this part ways because hikers on foot in an automobile world, with no home, etc., are in need and that stimulates people to respond with their better angels. Back home we are not in this kind of need, overtly anyway, and the impulse to help out is not brought out of people during regular life and so what you get is a kind of deadened stasis. Kim sees that what is lacking is not human nature but the stimulus and opportunity to be good and humanitarian.

8/17 Lower Summit Lake, Lassen National Park    Now the Klamath Mountains are done, the coastal giant salamanders, rough-skinned newts and curl-leaf mountain mahoganies (Cercocarpys ledifolius) sink into the past. The pitcher plants, Darlingtonia californica, stand as a clear memory, seen in only two places. The Klamath area is gone, we done did it; the Lost Coast is done too; we’ve witnessed much: the Mendocino Triple Junction, plate tectonics, subduction, schist and shale, serpentine soils, we’ve seen volcanics, Shasta, Lassen, lava fields, lava tubes, cinder cones, we’ve seen glaciation, cirques, moraines, hanging valleys, u-shaped valleys, massive ice scratching on bedrock and we’ve seen water erosion, v-shaped valleys, the effects of wind, water, gravity, freezing, heat and all of this in little old Northern California!

The Klamath Mountains have moderately cold winters with heavy snow. Summers are warm and very dry. The Klamath-Siskiyou is a unique floristic region with one of the largest collections of different conifers in the world. Thirty different confers are represented with two endemic species, the Port Orford cedar and the weeping spruce. In the Russian Wilderness is a place called the “miracle mile”, in one square mile there are 17 different conifers and 400 other vascular plants.

Local climate zones include Mediterranean, temperate rainforest, inland forests, oak forests, savannah, high elevation forests, alpine grassland etc. 

Due to logging and siltification of watercourses, salmon populations have fallen off drastically in the last fifty years. The area has populations of lynx and northern flying squirrel and was former grizzly and wolf habitat. Bigfoot or the Sasquatch is a big deal up here. This is Bigfoot country although we didn’t see one.

All the different conifers, rock formations and long sweeping vistas are now replaced by Lassen National Park and a lake crawling with people and mosquitos. There’s a sense of not wanting to see other people, of being invaded by them when you do see them. You come out here and expect solitude only to find group after group of other people trying to find solitude as well. People just like us transform into being annoying just by their very presence. You really have to work hard to get away from people altogether. Our longest stretch so far was 36 hours in a timber company logging area.

           

Yesterday afternoon at Hat Creek the water was massively cold. We went in but it left the feet numb for a half hour. This here lake is warm and you can swim, open your eyes under water and see through aqua marine hues to a sandy, gravel bottom, not too deep, just perfect as the waves ripple onto our little shore. As long as the wind stays, the bugs stay back. The sun is warm; nothing to do but sit here and listen to wind, waves and dragonflies buzz.

           

Hat Creek drains off Mt. Lassen’s north side and ultimately goes into Shasta Lake and then to the Sacramento River. It’s cold even way below the summit areas. Last night snow and ice type cold from the upper reaches of Lassen drifted right down Hat Creek and came straight into our camp, into our tent, invaded our summer bags, gave us the kiss of winter. It was mighty cold this morning. Now it’s just pleasant, sunlight on the ripples sparkling a million twinkles of light. A few puffy clouds punctuate a light blue sky; thousands of pines bear witness to this moment of tranquil reflection. We only did seven miles today so I’ve got time to write and muse.

8/19 Drakesbad Campground Lassen N.P.   The Drakesbad Resort was OK, not as great as I was led to believe. Rubbing elbows with a bunch of thru hikers is a mixed bag at best. Young as they are, they turn cliquish, put on airs of being too cool; many of them are out of reach of normal conversation. The thing is, you can’t get away from them on the trail they just keep coming. It will be good when we flip down to Tuolumne Meadows; that should clear the slate, put us more with our own age set.

           

I went to the Devil’s Kitchen yesterday afternoon, a volcanic area of mudpots, steam vents, boiling pools of water, a strong air of sulfur, pretty amazing that the molten aspects of plate tectonics can be just right there. It’s no joke; that shit will boil you alive. Later there was a place called Boiling Creek, hissing and moaning like Hell’s creatures themselves, a cacophony of whines, gurgles, yelps, tortured cries from the souls of the damned.

From the bushes I saw a bunch of rednecks all standing in the back of a pick up truck riding down a dirt road with rifles ready, poaching deer or shooting signs. That looked like a scene I wouldn’t want to run into. I met two northbound hikers who said they were shot at in the Belden section. The rural guys sometimes are very rough, lacking education and culture, unrefined, crude, poor, scary.

           

Kim went back to Old Station yesterday morning as we decided that divide and conquer would be the easiest way to get the van, versus us both trying to hitchhike through Lassen N.P., having to pay hefty entrance fees and possibly not even getting through to the less populated Old Station side of Rt. 89. Thus I am here alone at Drakesbad camp in the early morn with two more days and one more night out away from my faithful partner. It’s pretty quiet with her gone, silent actually and all the gifts she brings are now all too apparent. We are both odd mixes of characteristics and so are a good match as we find ourselves non-conformists and outside the mainstream. Anyhow I miss her a lot and at the same time feel a sense of adventure to have three days alone to settle into a more private conjugation of trail life and I know Kim is looking forward to going to Westwood and Lake Almanor. She was baptized in Lake Almanor in 2006 and so all these waters I hear now, run into her baptismal font, the Feather River.  She has a bit of a pilgrimage to do as she navigates these three days of separation and before we meet on Rt. 36 on Saturday morning.

While Kim was out on her own, she decided to try and intercept me and she did find my tracks. She also ran into the rednecks, a bunch of them, all men, with guns down by the Feather River; she tried to act natural and got out of there ASAP.

8/19 con’t   One other possible aspect of my antipathy for thru hikers: lack of respect for elders. Here I’ve had an outdoors career of 42 plus years and yet I’m cast as an old fogy, behind the curve on gear, goals, style, etc. It’s much nicer for me to interact with my peers, with my own age set. Some thru hikers can transcend the age/developmental barriers and be equals, they’ve got a bigger view: Hercules for example, Fly By. Part of my antipathy certainly stems from a feeling of missing respect. I signal visually with my pack all sorts of things that put me at direct odds with the young age set and so it goes with the generations, new music, new hair, tattoos, piercings, purple hair, who are these people? They’re the same as I was but with new props, same stage, same themes and yet somehow we grow apart.

8/21 Route 36   Kim picks me up in her van at the intersection of the PCT and Highway 36 outside Chester and we go back to Sonoma to prepare for the second half of the hike. We stop at Los Mariachis in Red Bluff for some great Mexican food. This is the best regular, non-yuppie Mexican restaurant in the whole Nor Cal region.

8/24 Sonoma   We started out at with a 4:30 AM alarm, a flurry of activity and a 5:30 pick up from Marianne. Then a drive to the Emeryville Amtrak Station in the East Bay just south of Berkeley where we got off with out a hitch and soon were riding smoothly on the train up the East Bay with long views of Mt. Tamalpais, San Rafael, Mt. Burdell, Sonoma Mountain and the Vacaville Mountains. In Richmond, a super high crime area, small shotgun houses were all festooned with burglar bars. And then through Carquinez Straits, straight to Suisun Bay, the Sacramento River delta and out into the Central Valley, Mt. Diablo and Altamont Pass to the south with all its wind turbines.

Pretty soon we were in Stockton, appearing as one big junkyard, homeless camps under bridges and in washes, ramshackle housing contrasted with fenced in tract developments. Then the bounty of the Great Central Valley: corn, grapes, orchards galore, peaches, nuts, squash, melons, olive, greenhouses, sorghum, hay, cattle feed lots, an omnipresent infrastructure of electrical transfer stations, canals, irrigation, granary complexes and associated rail spurs. And surprisingly, lots of small-scale oil production out here and associated rail connections.

Field workers drove dusty frontage roads and wore shade clothes as they worked. At Merced we transferred to an Amtrak bus. We soon found out from the driver that 17 people have died in Yosemite this summer! I guess we better watch out. The bus schedule then had us waiting for four hours in the thick of Yosemite Village crawling with tourists. Then we ride up through the classic granite formations to end up here, at a hiker camp in Tuolumne Meadows. We cooked dinner real quick, couscous, Mexican tomato soup and salmon. We’ve been four days off the trail and it feels good to be back.

8/25 Tuolumne River – water falls nearby   At 5:00 AM I was up with the Pleiades and Orion. Kim and I are both anxious to shoulder our packs and be back on the trail. The hikers campground at Tuolumne Meadows was filled with a whole different sort than the thru hikers we had grown accustomed to. The breed here in Yosemite is more focused on short hikes or completing the John Muir Trail. These folks have all manner of gear and gadgetry artfully shopped for at many an outfitter. It was a gear bonanza: an emergency satellite beacon! These are the people who keep REI in business. Fancy down coats, water bags, GPS, cookware, tents, all the latest styles. The campground floated with the aroma of steak, hamburger and bacon. Our granola bar for breakfast paled in comparison but we were the first to hit the trail.

So many people come to Yosemite that a certain, city-like anonymity pervades. You just can’t give full attention to so many strangers. It becomes like the city or a big town; you pass by with the merest of perfunctory greetings, one of which seems particularly stupid: “how ya doing?”, an invasive inquiry and apparent show of interest; who cares how Stranger X is doing? I don’t, they don’t either, so why engage in such a greeting? I prefer “Hi” or “Hello” only. The sheer numbers make interactions less present; any need for social stimulus is entirely satisfied. You want less contact actually. The mystery and grandeur of nature is lessened when as in Yosemite it is simply crawling with people everywhere. People come by one after the other. They are camped in every bush and thicket. Want to skinny dip? There’s ten couples all around, not to mention the main tourist areas like Yosemite Village which are over the top chock full of tourists out to see the sights. Once you get past a day’s hike the crowd thins out substantially.

           

We were ready to get back on the trail today and it felt good. We had some fun chats with folks of our age set. I wonder why some folks are compelled to chat and share and others not. What subtle cues of chemistry bring folk together or apart?

           

The main attraction today was to walk by a long series of waterfalls in the Grand Canyon of the Tuolumne River, really amazing, in particular, California Falls, where you can get out on safe rocks right next to super powerful water. There you are safe but two steps from certain death, good footing but one slip on polished rock and you’re done, game over. Pushing this exact type of envelope too far is how those 17 people died here this year.

9/1 East Fork Carson River    It’s been some days now since we put in at Tuolumne Meadows, many a fly and mosquito has plagued us and driven us mad. In fact now, with a spare afternoon here at a nice camp by the confluence of a roaring brook at the East Fork of the Carson River, the biting flies have driven me into the tent while Kim tends a smoky fire as we seek to while away a few hours in the relative pleasure of doing nothing. Yesterday we hiked out over many large snowfields above tree line, at 10,000 feet or more. We went through thick volcanic rubble, ten miles of this to Route 108 at Sonora Pass where we hitched ten more miles to our food drop at Kennedy Meadows Packer Resort. We got our food, got into the free box, munched out, outfitted ourselves for this next nine day stretch, hitched back up to Sonora Pass, camped illegally in a day use area, cooked up a bunch of free box tortellini, got the tent set up, dishes done and all in the nick of time just before dark. Then, as the stars still twinkled and a faint glow came on in the east I was up, cold, and beginning the day which led, ten miles later to this camp and some free time to reflect and expand on some ideas I’ve had along the way.

           

I learned along the way that the Tuolumne River runs into Hetch Hetchy Reservoir which provides water for San Francisco.  Some of that water passed all around my body as I swam in the river. People in San Fran will be tasting me!

           

The winter sky is advancing and many mornings greet us with frost; we see our breath and have to put on gloves and winter hats. Yet the intense high elevation sun makes us run for the shade later in the day. How many seasons will I have? One more winter sky rises. From where I stand in time I know I won’t have as many coming as I’ve already had.

           

We’ve been at pretty good elevations, 10,000 feet and above and at first it was hard with long uphill pulls, out of breath, but now we’re more or less acclimatized and can pace ourselves for hours through and above tree line, barren landscapes with smashing views in all directions. The PCT through Yosemite is characterized by intervals of high passes to valleys and back up, over and over again. Sometimes one sequence can take days to complete.

           

Yosemite really is a tremendous national park, very beautiful, special with the granite everywhere, one valley more outrageous than the next. One thing that stands out to us after being on a lot of National Forest Land, Yosemite has no roads and no cattle, the combination of which adds a sense of wilderness and remoteness you just don’t get otherwise. This is a fantastical land of eroded granite and outstandingly cool high elevation gnarled trees. We get to actually stay here, find campsites right in the middle of the magic.

           

In more popular areas the Park is crawling with people. This detracts from the sense of remote wilderness all these people seek. In the popular areas trails are absolutely thrashed by horses and pack stock. The stock is used mostly in service of bringing in gear to backcountry camps for people who don’t want to carry a backpack. There are six or so established back country camps in Yosemite where you can pay around $1,000 for three days, sleep in cabins or canvas tents and have cowboys cook you steak and pork dinners. One side effect of all this activity: the trails are thrashed, difficult to walk on and chock full of horseshit. Horses are more noble animals than cattle yet that doesn’t seem to much matter when every twenty yards you have to dodge a giant horse shit. Just don’t call it wilderness and then it will be OK.

           

I call Kim the black hole as her possessions are constantly disappearing; she’s very well organized and spends lots of time packing, folding and stuffing her stuff away, but things go in a different place every time and it’s a regular occurrence as she digs apart her whole pack to find that one little thing. Rarely does she actually lose anything, stuff just disappears for a while into the black hole.

           

The Sierra Nevada has a great variety of granites. The word granite comes from granular, grain; the rock is made up of grains of varying sizes of quartz, mica and feldspar. Differences in granite come from the size and composition of these three constituent mineral grains. The Yosemtie granites were formed during the age of dinosaurs; volcanoes ringed the CA coastal areas similar to how the Cascade volcanoes do Oregon and Washington today. The proto-Pacific oceanic plate subducted under the North American plate resulting in super-heated igneous rock below which fed the old volcanoes and also formed a batholith, a large mass of deep, underground, molten granite which cooled, congealed and rose up and presto you get the Sierra Nevada granites. Why did the Sierra batholith rise up? Maybe it was hotter and lighter than the surrounding rock? Maybe it was from isosity, when the earth’s surface is pushed down one place, it pops up in another. Surface layers of volcanic rock then eroded away to expose this granite we see today. In reality, no geologist saw the Sierra rise up; no one has the exact answer why.

The junipers here have the same gnarly, craggily niche that the mountain mahogany has farther north and that the bristlecones have over in the White Mountains across the Owens Valley. The junipers grow straight out of rocks.  They present great twisted, contorted shapes; bark nearly gone, tenacious, hanging on to life by the last possible shred. One tree, the Bennett Juniper was thought to be the oldest tree in the world before the bristlecone’s age was discovered. Kim really likes the quaking aspen, which she refers to as popple, a linguistic variant of poplar. Our camp here has a goodly amount of popple, the leaves of which jingle jangle in the breeze, make a soft, crackling sound, fluttering to the invisible, windy spirit of nature.

           

We went through a number of large meadows and swampy areas where the mosquitoes and biting flies were extremely bad. Where do so many of those pesky little creatures come from??????? It could be that mosquitoes are a great example of group selection; it’s not the survival of any individual that counts for much when you have such hordes; it’s not any particular individual fitness that gets the job done for mosquitos; it’s the aggregate, species effect, the group effect and thus, for r strategy animals, natural selection seems to pretty clearly operate at the group level. For K selection animals the individual is more paramount. We camped near some small glaciers and the cold drifting off them summoned Jack Frost, who keeps those bugs nicely at bay. Bugs also don’t like full sun and they have trouble with sustained wind. We learn quickly to avoid pain and where and when there are no bugs.

           

We don’t use any bug spray or DEET, only passive methods like bug suits, hats, pants, long sleeve shirts, smoky fires etc. We’ve seen many hikers smearing themselves with DEET, after which they presumably swim in lakes or streams and then we get Rachel Carson Silent Spring all over again, all that DEET in the waterways can’t be good; maybe that’s what’s killing all the high elevation amphibians in the Sierra? First, lots of bugs, second, lots of people, third, lots of DEET, fourth, people go swimming, and fifth, environmental consequences to amphibians and animals in the watershed.

           

Where the PCT crosses the Walker River begins a shift from predominantly granitic to volcanic rock and it stays mostly volcanic along the PCT all the way to Castle Crags across I-5 up by Mt. Shasta. My amateur theory is that there is Sierra granite underneath all along that way, the top volcanic layers just haven’t eroded off yet up north.

           

A few nights ago we camped up by Emigrant Pass in a white bark pine break at 9670’. Our camp was surrounded by krummholz trees; dwarfs, flag trees etc., all the effect of stress on the trees from high altitude, wind, cold, ice blasting etc. The wind was amazing up there, all night. Trolls and such must have been up and about just pestering us with one more blast of wind.

The mountains make their own weather. At night cold air carries down the drainages and then these same drainages funnel warm air from the valleys up into the high country during the day. This warm air funneling up from below creates warm updrafts above the mountains, the raw material for cumulus cloud formation, thunder and rain clouds. These updrafts are also the aerial substrate for soaring birds.

           

Our hitch hiking rides showed us genuine goodwill. One fellow, a young man named Lee, was recruited by the military as an exceptional sharpshooter. He was to train others to shoot as well; another guy was from the Bay Area and out to enjoy the Sierra for three or four days with friends.

In the central Sierra, the local flavor we’ve gotten so far is much different than up in the far reaches of rural northern California. Up in the rural north, Bay Area folk are dismissed as hopeless, ignorant liberals. Around these central parts the locals know their bread is buttered by Bay Area people out to escape the city and hike, hunt, fish, raft, whatever. The whole Yosemite/ Route 395 area survives by catering to Bay Area getaways; the locals can’t afford to be overly negative against the city folk as they bring money and sustenance. People who aren’t cashing in on the tourism can afford to be more cynical.

           

Finally for this entry, upon entering the Carson-Iceberg Wilderness on the north side of Sonora Pass, a sign said watch out for rodents and fleas with plague, if you get fever etc., remember you were in an area with plaque, well, all good so far….

9/9 Sugar Pine State Park, Lake Tahoe  Kim has been sick with respiratory issues stemming from the incredibly dusty trail conditions. This has been going on a week or so. The altitude and other possible issues are causing Kim to have a chronic lack of sleep yet she is bearing up quite well. In fact as we logged our 15^th mile of the day today she saw the last TARTS bus and promptly got on to go to Tahoe City to get our resupply package at the Post Office there. As for me, I had a pretty rough intestinal bout yesterday and then woke with a bum left knee and right hip, so here I sit at the campground having eaten all the rest of the food available, waiting and hoping Kim will get back within the hour or so. I guess my knees are just wearing out; my bad knee is now my good knee. Four ibuprofen and complete vegetation seems to be having a salubrious effect. Hopefully it will all resolve and our hike won’t be over for this.

           

The Carson-Iceberg & Mokelunme Wildernesses were totally great.  Especially the Mokelumne which was my favorite so far of the whole trip. Mokelumne has a flavor all it’s own yet with similar aspects to many other landscapes. The Mokelumne Wilderness looks like the Colorado Plateau in colors yet is primarily volcanic like a Death Valley. It has great juniper tree mixes and shows many different barren flavors along the way. The air there was crisp and clear with smells of sage and wildflowers. The Mokelumne is like Bristlecone National Monument except with junipers; it’s like the Pinacate volcanic area in Mexico with a sense of grand barrenness and exposure, yet there was water enough to grow the flowers. Gaging and comparing landscapes digs down into the memory of many trips; “it’s like this!”, “it’s like that!” In the end a distinct landscape is familiar to others yet different in its own ways. Landscapes are like flavors, you know them by subtle tastes and ingredients; the more you study them the greater your appreciation for small differences.

           

We were less impressed by the Desolation Wilderness to the west of Lake Tahoe. Automobile pollution filled the mountain valleys with a Phoenix/Tucson-like haze. The trails were filled with people, hardly desolate. We are definitely unimpressed by Lake Tahoe’s welcoming atmosphere as we found ourselves doing a long road walk because no one would give us a ride.

           

Kim is a star on the trail, she shines; she’s very present, in the moment, gives all people a genuine greeting and is ready to be spontaneous about anything. There’s no real status on the trail and in fact, Kim would have a higher status owing to her 1000’s of miles of hikes and her willingness to open up any aspect of hiking with anyone. Serious hikers are all impressed with her; her heart is on her sleeve and we’ve had some great stop-overs beside the trail with folks like Grape Nuts and Nowhere Man, or Scrubs, or the other fella with no trail name who was doing his last PCT section down to Yosemite. We even saw our first trail mentor Let It Be’s entry in a journal at Ebbetts Pass. We met him on the Appalachian Trail back in 2005.

           

Kim is also a natural with spiritual matters. She’s innately good, with an accurate moral compass and her takes on things are quite advanced, intuiting the highest philosophical stands, moral priorities and ethical principles, this peppered with a unflinching knowledge of our shadow side, our paradoxical and flawed human nature. Kim is in no need of any church to guide her precepts. Her stands on what is right or wrong transcends church doctrine. She handles muddy water territory and human inconsistency as an inevitability rather than a sin or a fault. She’s a true mystic. And now she’s off in Tahoe City somewhere as the sun sets slowly in the west; maybe she’ll bring me a sack of McDonalds cheeseburgers or some bacon-wrapped hot dogs!

           

It’s funny, these wildernesses, at every entry point are big signs extolling the primeval character, the preservation of nature, that these areas are untrammeled by man yet we find herds of cattle inside wildernesses with shit everywhere including in the water. Places like Desolation Wilderness are clearly over used and trammeled. In the Yosemite Wilderness horses have the trails totally beaten up. The horsemen are getting the better part of that bargain; they trash it faster then it can be fixed. Fixing trails is about at the bottom of any priority list for public spending.

9/10 5:45 AM Sugar Pine State Park    Kim did get me a sack of cheeseburgers! They were gooooooood! Kim’s impression of Tahoe City was of a complete tourist culture where all are strangers, many rich in their vacation getaways, a certain phoniness characteristic of tourism, similar to Sonoma, “hello, are there any locals/real people here?” Narrator’s note: As a modern alienated individual with no tribe, all people are suspect to me.

           

We’re going to make an early expedition to WalMart in South Lake Tahoe. This should be an adventure as we find ourselves on foot and pretty well without information or transportation in an automobile centered world. It’s a different feeling trying to navigate a place from this vantage. We’re going because my shoes have failed after 300 plus miles. The soles are worn to the point where they cause a bad pronation, enough to throw off my mechanics and cause the aforementioned hip and knee pain. Something must be done.

9/11 Sugar Pine State Park   We met an associate of ours from the trail yesterday in South Lake Tahoe. Jacob is his name.  We met him as his father was dropping him off on the first day of a two hundred mile solo section. We’ve run into Jacob off an on for ten days or so.  He’s a nice young man, 18 years old, super near-sighted with thick black nerd glasses, tall, lanky, short blond hair with tufts sticking out by the ears, small eyes, nose and mouth, slow with speech yet sure of himself and with a relaxed demeanor. He stayed at Middle Velma Lake the night after we did and he  had a bear incident. He turned around and there was “a 400 pound bear” quite close, he being near-sighted registered a face and then a few seconds later, oh, a bear face! Jacob did not back down.  He held his ground and ran the bear off. He checked on his stuff and saw the bear had ripped a hole in his tent. He admitted there could have been food wrappers and/or a bottle that had mixed drink in it. The bear later came back and they had a bit of a stand off after which Jacob said he packed up his stuff and left directly for a 14-mile hike to town in the evening in the dark. He was taking the same bus as us on his way to getting a new tent. I guess now he’ll be more careful with his food.

Yesterday, as happens periodically on the trail we got a small taste of what it might be like to be homeless with no vehicle, as we waited three and a half hours for a bus. We felt shunned, powerless in the face of a world full of shiny, expensive cars and people who would barely look at us. It’s hard for the uninitiated to tell the difference between a dirty hiker and a bum. It seriously sucks to be at the bottom of society, this discovery made by accident by coming to very well off Lake Tahoe as dirty hikers with many needs and few means. You see bumper stickers for Save Lake Tahoe. For who? From what? It’s all for rich people anyway, who cares? Why should I save something these people with their giant gated homes spend millions keeping me out of?

We’ve discovered that the Lake Tahoe area is primarily for rich people. Worker bees can’t afford to live there and have been moving out since 2008. The cost of rent is obscene. Property is too expensive to buy, run up in value by 2^nd homeowners from the Bay Area. Pretty much what you have is a depressed local economy with recreational tourism as the only game in town. The locals call the hardware store “the jewelry store” as it is so expensive.

And so in the Lake Tahoe area there has been an exodus of lower income people who cannot afford the continually rising prices. This recapitulates the same process in the Bay Area itself, who but the wealthy can live in Marin Country, Sonoma or Healdsburg? The Tahoe working class moves to Carson City, Auburn, Reno, Truckee, Gardnerville, etcetera and commutes to serve the masters in their cute luxury cabins on the lake. This is Two Americas right before our very eyes. Pay a living wage? Forget it.  All this type of economy seems to do is run up prices overall and leaves locals cynical and bitter about the affluent. This is the “service economy”, as contrasted to the industrial economy we used to have.

There’s a younger age set who go to the Tahoe area for sports such as skiing, boating, hiking, etc. and so they rub elbows with the rich while pursuing their own ends, all the while paying inflated prices and employing group strategies to keep costs down: living eight to a house or whatever. This young set and others might be termed the “independently poor.”

The astute observer notices a major disconnect.  There are many signs and stickers saying “Sustainable Tahoe”, “Save Lake Tahoe” and one wonders who this sustainability is for? What exactly is it that is being saved and why? Who will get to enjoy a sustainable Tahoe? Why would the poor want to contribute to keeping Tahoe as an elite playground? “Keeping Tahoe Blue” is propaganda for the ruling class. The whole sustainability movement seems geared to the already wealthy; it’s a class issue. When the economic underlayment itself is unsustainable, all the rest is bullshit.

At South Lake Tahoe’s transportation hub we found all the stores we needed and did laundry. I left my old shoes out front of the laundry on a bench and walked away with my new K-Mart el cheapo boots; that’s all that could be found. We then took the bus to Vikingsholm State Park, the former vacation home of Lora Josephine Knight. The architecture and craftsmanship intentionally show many examples of Scandinavian styles dating back to the 1600’s. Kim always finds fun places to go.

           

Kim and I are slow, with heavy older style packs, our goal is to be prepared and not overly expose ourselves to the elements. We meet thru-hikers and others whose strategy and goals are entirely different, they are ultra lightweight with all new gear and they go real fast. When push comes to shove they are more exposed to the elements.

           

Kim and I are “independently poor”.  We aspire to a leisure travel and recreational lifestyle yet we cannot really afford it. So we make do and never buy food at regular price, use K-mart boots, old packs, thrift store clothes etc. Do we want expensive gear? Do we want a house, nice cars etc.? Yes we do but by Fate, choice and circumstance we find ourselves in the other America where there is no medical care, no insurance, no savings and all is on a shoestring pending the next month’s rent. We really have to scrimp to go on a long hike.

           

One look at a fully outfitted ultra light hiker shows thousands of dollars worth of gear, at about three hundred dollars per pound to get the “base weight” down well below twenty pounds. They might have a $75 shade hat verses a $1.00 baseball hat and bandana for FCA. The thru hikers and affluent weekenders and non-resupply hikers drive the technology as they can afford it. Independent small manufacturers invent stuff and then the big names copy it and mass market it. There is pressure to “upgrade” before you’ve even bought anything!

I see there is a balance point of weight and preparedness. Too little gear you are unprepared, too much gear is overkill, beyond that, food and water are going to weigh something and you need a pack hefty enough to take the weight without being too uncomfortable. If your main goal is do as many miles as possible with as little weight as possible, that is a specialized type of hike I think is more like an athletic event.

           

In a substantial way, style, fads and hype start to make the wilderness outdoor experience less about transformation and experiencing nature, less about ethics and more about gimmicks, stuff and gear. It takes will power to consciously avoid wanting all the new stuff, to try and stay with what works versus the new and untested. You don’t need every new thing.

           

I see a tendency for herd mentality manipulated by economic forces pushing for gratuitous consumerism that ultimately has diluted the wilderness outdoor experience to one revolving around stuff and around goal orientation.  When young folks look for a way to get involved with the outdoors, they are pushed towards an athletic angle, a conquest angle, an extreme angle and what ends up generally lacking is a sense of service, transformation, transcendence and spirit. On the other hand you could also say that this transformation comes anyway just by virtue of living simply outside for months at a time. The transformation creeps into you whether you’re looking for it or not.

           

My style pretty much my whole life has been to let the game come to me. This goes as well for our hikes, albeit within the context of the over-all outlines of the hike’s plans. We go at ten to fifteen miles a day and that allows us choice of where to stay, nice lake? Let’s stay. We don’t often get railroaded into marginal spots right beside the trail and more often than not things seem to go our way, perhaps because of us cultivating the idea that allowing many possible outcomes is OK.

           

The history of the area from Yosemite north is in part ways the history of the Gold Rush, of European discovery and conquest, the passes are named for Fremont, Kit Carson, Ebbert, Jedediah Smith. The rivers and towns names evoke all that is Gold Country. These long distance hikes open up the history of an area one step at a time and as you pass through you can’t help but become aware of the depth of a region.

           

In the Lake Tahoe area white bark pine beetles and ozone are killing Ponderosa pines. It’s hard to differentiate if it is man-caused climate change, pollution, natural cycles or what? All over the west, beetles of different sorts are killing many trees; the forests are stressed. Is this normal? They say for lodge pole pine, yes, for others maybe no.

           

9/12/11 Granite Chief Wilderness    North Fork Blackwood Creek camp with Tahoe overlook          The upshot of my shoe/ankle/knee/joint issues was that my $125.00 low top Keens had a lack of support coupled with too heavy a pack, which caused my feet to pronate, which is not a usual issue of mine. After 500 miles of this, one day my knee said “enough”. Kim had the problem analyzed and it was true, those shoes had about no support. Now I have a pair of $25.00 Kmart Coleman boots! Which at least keep my feet square under me and hopefully so far another 200 miles. I can get 4 pair of these for one pair of Keens and they appear to be better! It is something to realize that some slight changes in angles can mess up your legs pretty bad.

           

Now we’re back on the trail, 6 double cheeseburgers, 5 salami sandwiches, a slice of pizza, 2 apples, 1 McChicken, 1 salad, 1 sundae, 1 cherry pie, plus our regular food and this just for me in two days! They call it “hikers appetite”. You burn more calories every day than you can possibly replace and this results in a massive hunger.

9/25 Middle Fork Feather River Camp   Circling Lake Tahoe is the very high use Tahoe Rim Trail. When the TRT diverges from the PCT up in the Granite Chief Wilderness our experience becomes much nicer, less people.

           

As we took two rest days at Sugar Point State Park in the Tahoe area we were also in the midst of about a week of daily thunder and lightening storms which generally struck in the late afternoon and evening on a hit or miss basis. We took a near direct hit at the campground, there was nowhere to run, nothing left to do but play Yahtzee.

           

On 9/14 we met Scott Williamson on the trail and it was fun to see him. He remembered us from 2008. Scott told us Bill Roberts got in a horse wreck and was in the hospital with broken bones, punctured organs. Wow. Scott is one of the weighty trail characters we’ve met in the past, along with Let It Be, Billy Goat and Ramzova. Ultimately it must be time on the trail versus actual miles that gives the depth. The transformational value is not measured by distance gained but by time immersed.

When we meet other hikers, Kim and I take the opportunity to speak of the transformational aspects of long term hiking, how it gets to be like a meditation, you find a zone, you let the game come to you, you don’t force your shot. What we value on our hikes is found on the interior, not on the surface. We’re impressed by who people are, not their credentials and as such, Scott Williamson is a cool guy, he’s been out enough that the time shows on him. He’s trail famous but not arrogant in the least bit.

To the north of Tahoe, the ski areas right on the edges of the wilderness constitute visual pollution. There you are in primo wilderness and all of a sudden: signs, roads, ATV’s, towers, cables, machines, buildings, all unseemly and unsightly, more mechanized use of the outdoors bleeding over into the PCT trail corridor. It seems there is a critical paradox of wilderness in this modern age, the more you try to find it the less it’s there. There are few areas left that are untrammeled, unencroached and unspoiled. The less of these areas there are, the more highly valued they become and the more bozos try to get to them via advertising in Backpacker Magazine.

You don’t expect to find wilderness type solitude in multiple use areas. You do expect more from actual designated wilderness and thus the above ski areas stand out; they make more of a contrast.

We’ve camped on and hiked past near every major California river from the headwaters of the Sacramento to the San Joaquin and Mt. Whitney.  Of note this trip: the north fork of the American River which leads down to Sacramento and where gold was first discovered in 1848 at Sutter’s Fort, the middle fork of the Feather River, one of the original wild and scenic US rivers, where huge pools are surrounded by polished, sculpted granite amidst steep hillsides of cedar, ponderosa and fir.

           

We also went through Donner Pass, that area of cannibalistic notoriety. Just north of Donner Pass we crossed I-80 and the whole sense of the trail changed quickly from wilderness to multiple use. Just outside the Granite Chief Wilderness to the North came the machines, the roar of the freeway, helicopters, trucks, ATV’s, bikes, motorcycles, ski lifts, radio towers, phone towers, airplanes, trains, cars, boats, it was the combine. (2) We camped just north of I-80, a main artery of the USA and it truly was amazing to hear the constant din of traffic, trucks and trains all night long. Where are they all going? To a dog party? The constant noise of machines seemed as if pulses of economic blood running ceaselessly along the veins of the system. The delivery of goods pounding down the road brings all that we consume; what would happen if this all went silent? Where would people get anything? Would they know how to live?

           

A weeklong storm system still lingered upon us, in the mornings with the cold, dewy breath of fall. On 9/17 we had a hard frost. The ground froze over and we knew summertime was come and gone. The one-pound summer sleeping bags were no longer warm enough but the bugs took a major hit and ever since have been tolerable. The slow unfolding sense of season’s change is quite nice. The days are more precious as the leaves change and the daylight is shorter.

Somewhere in here we run into Grubb Cabin, a Sierra Club stone hut which is very cool. We stop, go inside, find a big table!, unload the food, take out the stove, cook up two boxes of macaroni and cheese, munch out in comfort, no wind; we clean up, repack and onward ho!

           

North of Donner Pass all of a sudden we ran into a number of memorial sections of trail, such and such section is dedicated to the memory of so and so who loved the outdoors so much. This is a relatively recent phenomenon, coinciding with the memorial bench and other sorts of memorial plaques. It’s a privatization of public space funding; people give money, agencies get resources and the public has to suck up private messages. Land management and other public agencies must be hard up for money in this age of cut, cut, cut, but the fact remains, funding has to come from somewhere, people still must pay for public services; it’s just a matter of how the funds get raised. Tax, fee, donation, same difference. With no payment, public services like trails and libraries dry up.

           

Along with the legitimate multiple use, which simply lowers the common denominator from wilderness, you get cheaters who come in and ride bikes and motorcycles on the PCT, which is expressly forbidden. There are always those who claim the rules do not apply to them. And truth be told, everyone makes up their own rules when it suits them.

           

People get mountain bikes and then feel like they should be able to use them wherever. But just because a technology exists does not automatically translate into a right to use it. On designated hiking trails, bikes and other mechanized vehicles are inappropriate. Historically speaking, the non-mechanized uses of hiking and horses are the oldest and most substantial; these uses generally take priority over the combine. The combine encroaches on nature and wilderness; there are corporations, lawyers, advocates, pressure to open space to mechanical use. This amounts to technological inertia versus preservation of nature.

In multiple use areas, each class of user has their designated areas, off road vehicles and bikes have their spaces yet it seems irresistible for some of them to go on the PCT. In an ORV/ mountain bike area, nature is flat out chewed up. This is what happens with mechanized use. Sure it would be more pleasant to ride your bike, motorcycle or ATV where the surroundings are not all chewed up but after a few years of this mechanized use, all is degraded to the lowest denominator. Then there is nothing special left, the inmates run the asylum.

           

We went to camp at one lake a few miles off the trail and it was entirely dominated by OHV and ORV roads, and it was Friday night during hunting season; we decided to not stay there, too scary. I named it Redneck Lake. I’m more scared of careless hunters than I am of any wildlife. We ended up on high in a saddle all alone with owls hooting over our heads in the middle of the night, much more to our liking than the vagaries of drink, men, guns and Friday night.

On many lakes through multiple use lands we can hear the boat engines whining from miles away. Why would people want to jet around on an ugly, over-used lake full of other boats? What is the point? This kind of use is foreign to me. I can go on about small differences with other hikers but these mechanized folks are a totally different culture, alien.

           

Anyhow, regardless of the type of use, people compare their uses, you get social and economic purity comparisons. Everybody does it. When you see people living life, hiking or whatever and they have a different set of props, it’s natural to take their inventory and compare yours. What sort of use or style and why, what for? The rural guys find entertainment and outdoor activity in different ways than city folk. Yet the outdoors represents a common space for all users, for all citizens. Who controls and defines this common space? How can there be common rules among people with such different assumptions about life?

We come to that we are long distance travelers, not hikers of any kind per se. We’ve come to enjoy the journey on this road, as it unfolds, as much as anything.

The whole game of human behavior is fraught with value judgment and supposed purity issues. Everywhere you look you’ll find the same sort of dynamic, struggles over how people do things, about their reasons. Anytime this behavioral milieu is reduced to a struggle between true believers, what you get is intractable conflict. This sort of thing is never entirely escaped on the trail; as long as you run into people you can run into trouble. 

Here it’s 9:45AM and still no sun! I am shivering! But I had to get these stunning thoughts on paper!

9/29/11 Caribou Crossings Camp/ Belden – North Fork Feather River     Yesterday we completed our nine-day section from Sierra City to Belden, our last resupply before this hike is over. The fact that we have only one more week, out of 2 ¾ months total, makes things more precious, is cause for more reflection, a summing up starts to bubble out of us.

Now I sit out back in the camping area of a small-scale resort enveloped by the pleasant white noise of the river. This river has come through Lake Almanor and smells somewhat fishy. It’s 9:00 AM and the sun has not reached our camp.  We are in a steep cleft, a dark hollow, surrounded by oak, beech, alder and willow.

A rail line runs through down the main canyon to Belden. There is a surprising amount of rail in the northern California mountains. The diversity of shipments and car types is surprising as well. California is the 8^th largest economy in the world and the extraction of natural resources out of the hinterlands here has surely got to be a good part of it. I see a goodly amount of milled lumber plus train cars and cars and cars of who knows what? This is economy in action. One guy we met along the way said that logging is barely worth it now. The only wood paying is incense cedar.

In this Feather River drainage area there are lots of dams for irrigation and electric power generation. California is using its resources for agriculture and urban benefits. Natural resource extraction, trains, shipping, ports, Interstate Highways 5, 10, 80, major transportation arteries, California is impressive in so many ways. Until you see it in person and study a few maps you don’t realize how thoroughly P.G. & E., (Pacific Gas and Electric), the state and the cities have got the water scene so totally locked up and under control. Water is sequestered, owned and deeded; nearly every drop is accounted for. Public lands are interspersed with private entities like Collins Pine, P.G. & E. etc.

           

The fall has come in earnest. The cool weather reminds: “make hay while the sun shines.” The long, lazy summer days are over. The husks of now brown mule ear leaves rustle in the wind. The nights are long, equal to the day hours now, twelve and twelve; twelve in the tent, twelve out. A quiet and still feeling pervades. The first big frost has knocked the bugs way back. Winter pattern storms are here. When we camped on the middle fork of the Feather River it rained and rained for hours and hours, solid cloud cover, huge v-formations of geese flying over heading south. Any fall season Sierra hike has to take into account the danger of snow. You’d better be done by the end of September. 

           

From Sierra City to the north, the median elevation on the PCT gradually drops until you are in oak type forest, which also means poison oak. Poison oak demands full attention. All of a sudden you are in it; it’s very dangerous and the effects can last for weeks. It’s nice to be up higher in elevations free of that worry and hassle.

           

We first met Brook in Sierra City and hiked with him for most of this section. We all enjoyed each others company and now Brook is off to points north, in a good space to open up what the trail may have to offer.

           

What has the trail offered me? An alternate world mostly free of civilization and technology. Two and half months on the trail is like one long Quaker Meeting; it offers the space to explore inner potentials and contemplative realities. I can be content with total quiet doing nothing but watching ants, feeling the breeze, listening to birds, soaking in views, pondering my surroundings and the natural history, pondering life itself, the universe, the origins of planets, rocks, atmosphere, time. I can simply exist, in a more or less content way. The whole scene is uncomplicated, offering the chance to center down into simple being.

           

Coming through California’s Gold Country offers a different flavor than the more spectacular parts of the Sierra Nevada to the south.  We touch upon the same rivers, streams and creeks that spawned the Gold Rush163 years ago in 1849. Gold fever is a durable phenomenon and is alive and well; all sorts of amateur miners are still going for the gold in all manner of ways. After you meet and chat with them you start to maybe think, “what if I found a big chunk of gold!? I’d be rich!” Gold!!!!!! There’s a whole culture of gold people, mining, claims, posted warnings, gear, secret areas, kind of fun to brush up against it.

           

This section, from Belden north to Route 36, is definitely a cut below landscape-wise. Multiple use lands are not places you would choose to go to find wilderness inspiration. All the roads, logging, chainsaws, hunters, motorcycles, ATV’s, boats, etc., these are not what constitute the ingredients for a great hike.

           

Hunters prowl the back roads searching for deer. Is deer’s main habitat on roads? I saw one hunter in the morning right on the PCT. He tried to be stealthy but I saw him. I said “I thought I saw a puddy cat!” He carped about us not being quiet and scaring away the deer. I think hunters are our greatest danger. Later that same day hunters fired shots not far over our heads; we ducked behind some rocks, yelled, they kept on firing, four shots; I heard them laughing up in the rocks. This was really fucked up; you will never get that in National Parks. Hunting season is a low point for others trying to use the woods at the same time. These guys use telescopes and shoot from so far away that any movement could cause them to pull the trigger.  This is blind ambush, not hunting. There’s no honor in this, no stalking, no test of wills, no dance of death, no knowing nature in this blind ambush type hunting. It’s anonymous, separated by the telescope. Hunting season has the sense of a crazy free-for-all. We wear all sorts of loud clothing to try and prevent being shot. These guys are hunting right off the same trails that many hikers are using.

Who monitors these hunters? We see not one Forest Service personnel. I recommend being nowhere near multiple use lands in hunting season, too scary, too out of control.

Along the way as we cross a dirt road we run into a Mad Max morning after of a Chico State frat house keg party. Animal House for sure; they are covered with dirt, lying on the ground while beer is poured straight out of the tap into their mouths. Last night they took hot dogs and sat in the field hoping to lure a coyote in. We exit before we get roped into any craziness.

There’s not much organic soil here. It is dusty big time. We have to walk fifty yards apart

           

My thirty dollar Coleman Kmart boots have held up well.  Initially I had to sew up some early tears due to cheap material. Dental floss and a boot needle are indispensible equipment. These cheap boots have better mechanics and support than my $125.00 Keens; all my Keen-related leg and knee pain is gone, fixed. I guess I can’t expect to carry a heavier weight with a lighter shoe.

           

Now we are taking a zero here at Caribou Crossing, a cheap trailer park full of small town gossip. Kim and the owner’s daughter hit it off well. We meet a guy in the Café who carries on about all the local crack and meth heads with no teeth down in Belden. There’s lots of unemployment, only part-time work. Apropos of the whole rural/ urban divide, I find there is as much pathos in the country as the city. This is not some bastion of pure traditional values out here; they have all kind of low-life problems, crime, addiction, violence, theft. Human foibles are present all over, equally distributed.

The Post office lady in Belden lost the local resort in 1978 to another lady named Karen. There is some real bad blood locally. They say the meth heads get paid under the table, are just out of prison, in a supposed cover operation for some other nefarious purpose, accusations of stealing money, drinking on the job, contested gold mining claims, on and on. This is a small pond full of intrigue.

Soon we’re on to our grand finale, Los Marriachi’s in Red Bluff and back to our former life in town.

9/30/11 Caribou Crossroads/Beldon North Fork Feather River    As we approach our approximately 2700^th mile of long distance hiking, it is clear we have adapted to multiple kinds of camping arrangements. There was a time I didn’t want to be in sight of the trail, now I’ll settle for a flat spot wherever, as long as it’s flat. Now I’ve come to actually savor the cultural flavor of seedy trailer parks tucked into small towns, next to railroad tracks etc. The sense of the land, its culture and people add to the richness of a hike. Camping on a long distance hike is a mix of woods and town situations. The successful hiker takes what the game brings, finds a way to deal, appreciates both town and country.

So we’re going along on our final days and the weather turns cold and there is talk of a big storm coming. We stay at an old cabin site and find all manner of junk. We start to want and need campfires. All of a sudden we are really hungry! We need calories!

Twenty feet off the trail near this Williams Cabin site I find a thru hiker garbage dump, two Cliff Bar wrappers, six tuna in foil wrappers, one large fruit mix, two Pop Tarts, Bear Naked bar, Peak Flax bar, oats and honey with blueberry, Squirrel Valley fruit mix (from Grocery Outlet), two Nature Valley salty nut cashew bars, corn nuts, 1 pound of spaghetti, four Squirrel Valley tropical fruit mix, Snickers, four small bags M&Ms, four small bags peanut M&Ms, baby Ruth, Gatorade powder pack, two Craisins. Compare this to some hunter trash I found: five instant oatmeals in a box, lots of cigarette butts and beer cans. 

There is caution all along the Sierra for pot growers. Now that you can get a prescription and legally grow a few plants for yourself, the market for these foothills growers is of a different sort, a mass market. When you find Mexicans in the woods who speak no English, beware!

The forest is thick, not many views; this is prime logging country. There, off in the distance, it’s Lake Almanor. We lived around here in the summer and fall of 2006. We know this land. The snowy top of Mt. Lassen draws closer. One step at a time we pass through the landscape. We’re a little early to meet the Indian bus from Susanville and I want to stay out to the very end. I don’t want to go home. We pull up and take a zero at an established campsite by a creek and gather lots of wood. We make a fire with as big a wood as will fit. That night it snows, the tent nearly collapses with the weight. It is super cold.

In the morning I persevere and luckily get a fire going. I was down to my last piece of homemade fire starter of dryer lint and paraffin wax poured into a cardboard egg carton. The snow and rain had extinguished our coals during the night. The fire is our savior; we dry out, stand near, pass the day close to the heat and burn every last scrap of downed wood anywhere nearby. Yes, it is still super cold and our gear just barely keeps us warm if we’re moving. One more night at this camp and then on to the final camp near Route 36. The night passes and we are up and moving quickly. The forest is magic with snow. The days are short. We get to a nice ponderosa grove near the road and set up camp just as thick snowflakes begin to fall  in earnest. Yeah, you better respect October in the mountains.  We’re in. We play our Yahtzee, read our books and hunker down one last time. The night is over again and we’re up and out by the road. Kim has arranged for an Indian tribe bus to stop and pick us up where the PCT crosses Route 36. It is snowing; we’re cold; cars zip by and, could it be? Yes, it’s the bus. We get on. The heat is on. The radio is blasting commercials. Oh my god! We’re like a piece of flotsam pulled out of an eddy and sucked into the main current of the river. Swooosh! Red Bluff, Los Mariachis, the library, waiting for the Amtrak bus. The back road to Chico, Route 99, Sacramento, the train, Martinez, Maryianne is there, she drives us to Sonoma and 1, 2, 3 just like that we’re done, home, the trip finished.

NOTES

(1)

It turns out we didn’t need or want the GPS. Personally I’d rather be lost than to succumb to more gadgetry. The whole idea is to put yourself in a place beyond civilization, not to bring as much of it with you as possible. My early hiking mentor John MacDonald liked to quote Daniel Boone: “I’ve never been lost, turned around a few times, but never been lost.”          

(2)

“The combine”: see Ken Kesey, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest. The combine represents an inhuman, giant machine, the forces of society seeking to control people.

Addendum

Bear-proof containers

In high-density black bear habitat, on near all public land, the land management agencies uniformly say to hang your food within certain parameters on a tree, 10’ up 10’ out, or they require bear-proof containers.  This is to prevent bears from being able to get stored food, becoming habituated to human food and possibly having to be killed.       

No reputable source of outdoor practice and ethics will ever say to sleep with your food or store food in your pack overnight. It is foolish to tempt a 300 pound plus bear, plain and simple. The premise of most thru hikers who do not properly protect food is that there is no problem with any animals so why bother. Bears can be run off and they are scared, so why bother going to the trouble of hanging food, carrying the rope, taking the time etc. The first consideration here is convenience and hewing to ultra light considerations, not to wilderness ethics. Why is there no problem with animals? Well, because the trail is not seen as wilderness in the first place; the trail is just an extension of the domestic sphere. Satisfying individual goals and convenience has gained precedence over a culture of wilderness ethics and appreciation.

In the majority of instances, especially at any altitude, you can’t find the proper tree geometry to hang your food properly anyway and so hikers and their food become exposed, out of compliance and at risk. And, most people are not carrying bear proof containers in instances where there are no trees to get a good hang.

It’s not just bears to protect from becoming habituated to human food, also raccoons, skunks, opossums, chipmunks, mice, squirrels, ravens and jays. Any of these animals can become a serious nuisance when habituated. To a food habituated animal, people and their stuff equal food, period.

Our style is to stay very clean and carry bear-proof containers at all times. No food or food smelling stuff ever goes loose in our packs. No food ever goes in the tent. No loose food goes in our clothing pockets. So far we’ve had zero trouble in 3000 miles on the trail. We were among the very few people on the AT in 2005 who actually hung their food versus slept with it right next to them in tents or shelters.

We see full time bear proof containers as the only reasonable option to the question of how to protect our food, and to prevent the creation of food habituated animals. We don’t care about the weight in this case because this is what we must do given the parameters of changing trail situations. We’re almost the only ones who carry these containers outside of mandated areas, i.e. areas with known problem bears or food habituated bears. Why do we do this? One: the only other viable method to protect food is by hanging it in a tree and trees of the appropriate size and configuration are more often than not unavailable, Two: this is the only way to satisfy good outdoor practice ethics without having to sleep with our food or store it in our packs.

Proper food storage habits are like good driving habits, you don’t throw caution to the wind and drive crazy as soon as no other cars are around. Likewise you don’t stop secure food storage habits as soon as you think it is OK and there is no threat.

Furthermore, around Lake Tahoe, the overall high level of backcountry recreational use plus sloppy food handling by backpackers in general has resulted in a Tahoe Basin-wide food habituated black bear problem that will soon mean mandatory bear-proof containers for all the public lands there. Bears even get into the Post Office lobby and rummage the trash for McDonalds wrappers people dump off there.

In the whole West Tahoe Basin there is a food habituated bear problem much worse than Yosemite. This pretty well shows that unregulated high use results in the necessity of tighter management and that left to their own devices, enough people lose food to bears and other animals to create an ongoing problem.

Ultra Light Paradigm

“It is the theory that decides what we can observe” A. Einstein.   A paradigm is a set of assumptions that define practice, delineate what is important, proscribes what questions get asked, what issues are addressed, how phenomena is interpreted, how actions are conducted and what equipment is used.

In the world of long distance hiking today, one obvious and perhaps dominant paradigm is ultra light hiking. This paradigm is primarily about reducing pack weight. In the ultra light paradigm, weight and the ability to do more miles in less time has become more important than potential preparedness, proper food storage, camping ethics or even the wilderness experience itself.

As with many paradigms what starts out as a decent idea has strong potential to get bogged down in purity issues. I see that long distance hiking has come to be held hostage by ultra light hype and purity. Almost every ultra light thru hiker (ULTH) has a similar thesis for their hike: fast and light. They have the same type of gear and espouse similar rationales. They are conforming to a style. Past thru hikers probably conformed to past theses and styles. Today’s ultra light style is a ready-made construct that people can enter into and immediately start to share all the meanings and permutations.

Once a paradigm is accepted, all interpretation is shoehorned in, no matter if it really fits or not. Among ULTHs and the Pacific Crest Trail Association itself, the ultra light paradigm shoehorns people away from wilderness ethics and more into goal orientation and convenience. The PCTA tacitly accepts lower backcountry ethics in the face of the inertia of the ultra-light paradigm. For example: sleeping with your food is a style advocated by nobody but used widely out of convenience, to save weight, time and hassle.

I don’t see the prioritizing of an ethic here. I see a belief that nature along the PCT is just an extension of humankind’s worldwide domestication of the planet. If you read Leopold, Muir, Brower, you find a deep respect for nature. If you read long distance hiking news you find a focus on gear and convenience, not on the transformational potential of deep immersion in outdoor living. Hence, along the PCT you see high impact campsites, camps sites right next to the trail, many fire rings, illegal campsites near streams and lakes, all evidence that completing the trail from Mexico to Canada is the highest priority and that smelling the flowers on the way is a distant second fiddle to making 30 miles a day, day in, day out for months on end. Long distance hiking has come to resemble extreme sports more than the seeking of a transformational wilderness experience.

Being aware of your paradigm leads to a fundamental fork in the road, a basic choice in how you conceive of your hike, is your time in the wilderness a transformational process or athletic event type of goal?  Do you take ten days to do 100 miles and soak it in or do it in three or four days walking all day? Certainly the actual goal of a wilderness hike is not simply to go from point A to point B; that would be absurd; that makes the trail just a platform for athletic performance.  

I propose that for the most part, ultra light thru hiking is an athletic event, an athletic challenge and not primarily a wilderness experience. As an athletic event first, many times for ULTHs a sense of wilderness ethics is lacking. Even though the PCTA pushes the low impact camping, it’s pretty much pro forma and roundly ignored by many ULTHs. The idea to protect food so as to not create food habituated animals, of any species, is not a high priority for thru-hikers. Convenience comes first. They feel safe to store their food right on them day and night. They feel safe because they see there is no problem; the backcountry is just a platform for the realizing of personal goals, a stage to complete the whole PCT and not a special place to respect and honor.

ULTHs are like commuters on Highway 101 going to the city, fast, in a hurry, aggressive, goal-oriented drivers with little or no patience for anybody in the slow lane.  The relentless focus on the big goal, of getting somewhere, closes doors along the way.  This is why interactions with ULTHs are frequently unsatisfying; they are all the same; they have no time and our paradigms are different; there’s not a lot of common ground.

I find myself set against them paradigm-wise and stylistically even though in person they’re just regular folk with their own stories to tell. Interactions with them are frequently marked by friction and misunderstanding.

I find the same kind of mentality that sets nature as something to be conquered, controlled and dominated. The ultra light thru-hiking project simply transposes individual, alienated city styles onto the back woods. The ultra light way is not to find God in nature like John Muir; it is to use nature as a platform for the realization of individual athletic type of goals were convenience is the highest priority. This is how the environmental movement has panned out for the younger generations.

Certainly being light where possible makes sense; it’s when the whole project goes over the edge on purity testing that people lose sight of why they’re even going out to the woods. It’s not about the gear folks. It’s not about simply getting from point A to point B. 

In the ultra light paradigm as seen in practice on the PCT, low impact ethics are consistently brushed off in favor of convenience.  For example fire and wood gathering restrictions are ignored to save weight on stoves and fuel.  Campsite protocols are ignored to establish sites right next to trail. People hike dawn to dusk and then just plop down right next to the trail and make a small twig fire to cook dinner; you see these sites over and over again. It’s like the trail is a low rent motel for ultra light thru-hikers.

While I’d like to see a little more depth from the thesis of people’s long distance hikes, a little more history to the paradigm, there’s nothing wrong with convenience-oriented hiking per se. It is a way to at least be exposed to nature. Those who choose one method need not worry how the others get it done, just let it be. But whatever the style, basic ground rules and backcountry ethics still have to be adhered to, food protected etc. If people are going to enter public lands, they are not absolved of having any ethics because they are trying to get to somewhere fast. Having a national backcountry trail like the PCT first demands that the ground be respected. The primary purpose and value is not that the trail exists so ultra lighters can burn through as fast as possible. Maybe somebody could blaze a new method, be the first person to hike the PCT or the AT with a bear-proof container the whole way; Scott Williamson, make it cool, start a trend.

Ultra light thru hikers don’t carry bear-proof containers if they don’t’ have to because they are obsessed with keeping their pack weight down. They also generally don’t hang their food because one, all the stuff to do that means extra weight, two, it takes too much time when they could be hiking and three, the right tree geometry to get a good food hang is mote often than not, not possible. The premise of most ultra light thru hikers is that there is no problem with any animals anyway so why bother. The first consideration is convenience and hewing to ultra light and expediency considerations, not to wilderness ethics.

It’s sad to say that what may be wilderness for some is just an extension of the domestic sphere for others. Why is there no problem with animals? Well, because the trail is not seen as wilderness in the first place; the trail is just another place where people can bring their goal oriented conquest mentality, an extension of the domestic sphere.

The lack of wilderness ethics among the ULTH set is an incipient problem. Short-term, convenience is trumping a long-term, conservation, ethically oriented view and practice. Eventually this will result in higher levels of regulation for everyone.   

To conclude, I feel it is reasonable and in accordance with good wilderness ethics to have my food entirely protected in all situations and I’m willing to haul a few extra pounds to see that I remain that way. Not having to try and find a suitable food-hanging situation every night is extremely convenient. We can leave our packs for a day hike or whatever and nothing can get our food. We can also wash our sox and clothes in the containers and not foul any natural watercourses. And, the containers make a great seat.  

As historian Barbara Tuchman said, people won’t change until the sewage is coming on the front door. The problem of diminishing wilderness ethics in the face of more and more convenience oriented hiking, is the same type of human problem as overfishing or insistent use of fossil fuels: people take the easy way until they are forced to change. It’s unfortunate to see a whole convenience culture grow up around the woods and wild nature. This is however, just a paradigm and perhaps its time for a paradigm shift.